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Busted Flat: All-Too-Normal Activity Dominates the 'Ghostbusters' Remake

©2016 Village Voice, LLC. All rights reserved. ^ | SUNDAY, JULY 10, 2016 AT 9 A.M. | BY MELISSA ANDERSON

Posted on by Behind Liberal Lines

What I watched for the next two hours was mostly a tragic underutilizing of four of this country's funniest women  Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon as the evil-ectoplasm battlers of the title, fighting to save a New York that is played primarily by Boston  combined with what felt like the world's longest laser-tag game.

the main performers rarely get to display their individual idiosyncratic strengths. It's particularly dispiriting to hear McCarthy, one of the most floridly gifted verbal riffers in comedy, have to utter frat-brah catchphrases like "Let's do this."

That kind of lifeless, recycled language sounds even worse when Wiig, another performer who has perfected how to do things with words, cries out, "Say hello to my little friend" before zapping a spook in the film's near-interminable final act, a glut of green beams that suggests nothing more than an f/x trade show. (Look how much technology has advanced since 1984!)



(Excerpt) Read more at villagevoice.com ...

TOPICS:

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US: Massachusetts

US: New York

KEYWORDS:

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Female critic for the Village Voice hated the movie? Can't be. The producers already told us that the only people who wouldn't like the remake would be women-hating Trumpkins.



To: Behind Liberal Lines

I do know one thing. I always thought Whoopi Goldberg, was the ugliest woman in the US. Well, Leslie Jones, now has top honors. As my late father would say, “Son, I could place her out in my cornfield and she would have crows bringing back corn, they had stole three years ago.”



by 2 posted onby Capt_Hank (btu's...kcal's...to kJ's, but my activation energy is still high.)

Comment #3 Removed by Moderator

To: Behind Liberal Lines

Even a Village Voice liberal hates it.



To: Behind Liberal Lines

Feig, who directed Wiig and McCarthy in Bridesmaids (2011) and the latter in The Heat (2013) and Spy (2015), has done more than any other filmmaker to expose the idiocy of an industry that still insists that women cannot carry big-studio-financed comedies. But his Ghostbusters, which he co-wrote with Katie Dippold (the scripter of The Heat), is too risk-averse, despite its nominally radical gender-switching premise. I see the problem right away. The first three films are raunchy, 'R'-rated comedies. Admittedly, I laughed my ass off throughout all three of them. Ghostbusters could never have been a raunchy, 'R'-rated comedy. Feig was probably the wrong guy at the helm to try to dial it back.



To: Behind Liberal Lines

I’m waiting for the “Hitler reacts to the new Ghostbusters” YouTube video.



To: Behind Liberal Lines

I am getting tired of being told that if you are not thrilled about the Ghostbusters remake you must be a misogynist. Most remakes are not any improvement on the original. The fact that someone is doing a remake at all is usually a clear indication of lack of creativity. The worst remakes are gimmicky remakes such as this where they recast rolls with different sexes or races. That is not creativity, that is a formula. I fully expect that someday some idiot will remake Gone With The Wind with Rhett and Scarlett recast as black and gay.



by 7 posted onby kennedy (No relation to those other Kennedys.)

To: Behind Liberal Lines

The guy from Wreckless Eating basically said the movie is completely anti-male and sucks to high heaven.



To: Capt_Hank

I don’t mean to pick on people for their looks, but Good Heavens, did they send out a request for the tallest, most masculine, boorish, Moochelle-attitude double in the land?

I actually wondered if she was transgendered.

Apart from that, it’s amazing how seriously this movie is being taken. I suppose expectations were sky high.

Your dads remarks about the scared crows made me laugh.



To: Huskrrrr

OK, I should have done a search first. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwPcujJ-Eyc



To: lee martell

Remake was unnecessary, we already know the story. Sould have been a totally different movie based on the concept. No reason to go see it.



To: Behind Liberal Lines

ouch , that’s going to leave a mark



To: freedomwinsout

Uhhhh. No. The film started off with Ivan Reitman (the original director of the first Ghostbusters) producing and directing. Amy Pascal, a flaming feminist whose incompetence was laid bare by the Sony email hacks, disagreed with Reitman’s vision of the film (an ensemble cast that was handed the reigns by the surviving members of the original film [Murray and Acroyd] in a movie intended to be a sequel). She had Reitman removed and Feig brought in, with the understanding that the film would be a reboot, not a sequel, and that the cast would change to an all female one. Feig was an enthusiastic supporter of this change! He may have been saddled with an inferior script, but he has been front and center in portraying the criticism of the film as misogyny from “Trump-supporters.” Feig and Pascal are the prime movers of this flop! Read the hacked Sony emails...



To: lee martell

I saw her for the first time in a commercial. I had to do a google search. I don’t watch “Saturday Night Live”. You are correct, I also thought it was transgendered.



by 14 posted onby Capt_Hank (btu's...kcal's...to kJ's, but my activation energy is still high.)

To: Behind Liberal Lines

The early reviews are all screaming “stinker!”, for a multitude of reasons. The only upside is the hilarious Chris Pratt, who gets just enough screen time to break through the gloom, but no more. To start with, the movie is extremely misandric, full of hatred and bile towards men. All the men within are depicted as “a-holes” with Pratt just being “the stupid one”. Even the great monster is a male, and they destroy it by all firing their weapons at its crotch. The movie is also racist, turning the usually well spoken black comedienne Leslie Jones, into a gross, ignorant, stereotypical Hollywood caricature of a black woman. The movie also breaks with Ghostbusters canon a lot, violating many of the “rules” of the franchise. The trailers were terrible, the theme music just stunk on ice, the special effects were mediocre at best and unconvincing at worst. Even the poster was bad, looking like something from a horror movie. http://i.imgur.com/CcrvBMW.jpg But the best part was that, when criticized, everyone involved, from SONY, the director, the actresses, etc., came out to *insult* the critics as misogynistic and hateful. This is not effective “damage control”. The budget for this nightmare is officially $154 million. Release date is July 15, 2016. Be sure to watch this Hindenburg crash and burn.



by 15 posted onby yefragetuwrabrumuy ("Don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative." -Obama, 09-24-11)

To: Huskrrrr

"Im waiting for the Hitler reacts to the new Ghostbusters YouTube video." Ach, du lieber Gott!



by 16 posted onby PLMerite (Compromise is Surrender: The Revolution...will not be kind.)

To: yefragetuwrabrumuy

“Release date is July 15, 2016. Be sure to watch this Hindenburg crash and burn.” We can make smores! I actually hope the film bombs.



by 17 posted onby vladimir998 (Apparently I'm still living in your head rent free. At least now it isn't empty.)

To: Behind Liberal Lines

The only thing more vapid than the trailers I have seen is this review. It is absolutely vapid.



To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; ...

by 19 posted onby SunkenCiv (I'll tell you what's wrong with society -- no one drinks from the skulls of their enemies anymore.)

To: Behind Liberal Lines

Yep—I decided not to go after I was called a sexist for questioning why a remake was even necessary. Marketing 101—It will not end well for your product if you preemptively piss-off your target market.



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