Fans of the original “Ghostbusters” franchise have been prepared to despise its reboot since at least January 2015, with director Paul Feig’s tentative cast announcement. This happens with every sacred cinematic property, but not since “Star Wars: Episode 1” has the Pavlovian outrage turned out to be so warranted.
To be clear, I wasn’t one of these fanboy haters going into last night’s press screening. I have little connection to the original films, and I haven’t seen them since I was young enough to be scared by the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. Tests of purity and fealty to the 1984 film need not apply.
If it’s possible, then, to absorb the film on its own independent merits, the only sane critical conclusion is that it has no reason to exist beyond the same profit motive that greenlit Independence Day: Resurgence. Another computer-generated celebration of excess, it offers nothing in the way of novel entertainment, amusing diversions or, god forbid for a summer blockbuster, cultural sustenance.
It does provide a faux-edgy gender reversal of the original film’s sausage fest, but aside from an insulting comment leveled by the male president of Columbia University toward the wardrobe of soon-to-be-ousted particle physics professor Erin Gilbert (Kristin Wiig) early in the film, this switch is devoid of social commentary. That would be fine if the point of this reboot were to simply provide juicy roles for four accomplished female actors and let them run verbally and physically roughshod over a comic goldmine of unlimited potential, but the movie’s foundering attempts at humor are desperate and witless, reduced to scatological sound effects and juvenile, PG-13-friendly sex jokes.
The best that can be said for the stillborn script by Feig and Katie Dippold is that it’s a more egalitarian “Ghostbusters” than its antecedent, a Bill Murray star vehicle in which the other ‘busters were mere passengers. Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones are equally wasted, to say nothing of poor New York City, convulsed to pixelated death once again in another overwrought apocalyptic climax.
Along the way, residue from the 1984 “Ghostbusters” infiltrates the reboot like so much sentimental ectoplasm, prompting brief paroxysms of recognition that serve as mental escape hatches from the remake’s dearth of ideas: the old iconic logo resurfaces; the award-nominated theme song gets a 21st century Auto-Tuned cover; Slimer materializes but adds nothing to the narrative; and the original stars, grey and sagely, pop up in mostly uninspired cameos.
But as slaves to the same writers who neutered the actresses on the poster, they’re likewise given nothing hilarious to do or say. Feig seems to be relying merely on our sense memory of these Boomer funnymen, prodding us to laugh, reminisce and wallow in the hollow nostalgia that is this movie’s apparent raison d’etre. Well, that and the product placement: In addition to the disappointment you’ll feel about this superfluous remake when you leave the theater, don’t be surprised if you’ll experience a subconscious hankering for some Papa John’s.
“Ghostbusters” opens Thursday at area theaters.
