Anne and I saw Ghostbusters the other night. It was no Woman In Gold, or even, say, The Lady in The Van, but it definitely was a fun way to spend a few hours. Silly and dumb, a bit cheesy at times (especially with the shout-outs to the original movie), it was still a fun movie to see. Did I mention that it was fun? Some observations:
I’m a big fan of Melissa McCarthy, by the way, or at least I really liked her in Spy, and I found her to be a bit of a disappointment here, possibly because they didn’t give her enough space for real physical or verbal comedy. Leslie Jones was really good especially early in the movie, but she sort of faded once she became a Ghostbuster, while Kate McKinnon did the opposite, starting out annoyingly, almost cartoonishly affected before settling into her role. Kristin Wiig seemed to be the designated star, and she did a great job (never heard of her before, but I became a fan over the course of the movie), but it seemed that her best parts were her dialogue with Melissa McCarthy, and in fact it seemed that some of her lines would have been better coming from McCarthy.
There was one other main character, Chris Hemsworth as their ditzy beefcake receptionist. Some of the things he did made me laugh out loud, but it was mostly affected sight gags, and little skits that didn’t work for me.
Affected, cartoonish — these were my only real issues with the movie. They seemed to like tossing a bone to different possible audiences: cameos by Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver for fans of the original (actually I liked these), manic cartoon ghosts (and manic Kate McKinnon) for the kids, etc. Kids might disagree but I found them annoying.
Bottom line: this is a decent “stupid summer fun” movie. Definitely go see it, but don’t expect Shakespeare.
