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Ghostbusters (2016)
Growing up in the 80s, other kids had Transformers, or G.I. Joe, or He-Man, but I was a Ghostbusters kid. I fell in love with the 1984 original movie, slept below the poster for most of my childhood, and obsessively collected all of the action figures, watched with glee the animated TV series, and hold the world and its characters in a special personal place. The 1984 movie is such a perfect blend of buddy comedy, the supernatural, and action that nobody has really been able to fully replicate this special film alchemy as well since, including director Ivan Reitman (he tried in vain with Evolution). When the word broke that there was going to be a new Ghostbusters remake, some trepidation from fans could be expected. It’s sacred ground to many. Director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) insisted that he wanted to have an all-female team of Ghostbusters, and that’s when the Internet lost its collective mind. The movie and its stars have been beset with hateful misogynistic (and, in the case of Leslie Jones, racist) harassment. The Internet didn’t want smelly girls playing with its toys. It became part of a larger war between feminists and retrograde men’s rights activist crybabies. Some people wanted it to be succeed just because of he gender of its leads, and others wanted it to fail for the very reasons. I just wanted a good Ghostbusters movie regardless of what bathroom the busters utilize.
Erin (Kristen Wiig) is an esteemed science academic trying to turn the page on her past. Her friend and fringe scientist Abby (Melissa McCarthy) has republished the book about paranormal they wrote together, which ruins Erin’s chance at tenure from her colleagues. Her ire is short-lived as Erin, Abby and her wacky nuclear scientist associate Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) experience a real dead ghost. Their slime-filled encounter with the undead reawakens Erin’s love of the paranormal and the three of them join forces. Patti (Jones) is an MTA worker who leaves her job and joins the gals after her own experience with a ghost in the New York subway. Somebody is trying to open a portal between the living and the dead, and these Ghostbusters gotta bust some ghosts.
My initial apprehension melted away within the movie’s first twenty seconds when it already had me laugh out loud twice (“anti-Irish fence”). There’s a consistent genial absurdity that kept me engaged and entertained, and this is typified by the strong comic camaraderie of the four leads. I enjoyed spending time with these ladies and I enjoyed their interactions, so when scenes could creep up on overstaying their welcome from a pacing standpoint, something of a Feig staple, I gave them more leeway and felt my patience rewarded. I don’t know how to make it plainer than this: I am not a Leslie Jones fan and I liked Leslie Jones in this movie. I have found Jones to be all-too often on Saturday Night Live a one-note comic presence, always loud and brash and hitting the same joke again and again with little variation. With Ghostbusters, she actually plays a character, capable in her own right, and a straight man for the other characters. These women were goofy, gross (a queef joke within Holtzmann’s first appearance), but they also enjoyed one another’s company. There are internal conflicts, sure, but their enjoyment of working together, of displaying their know-how, of the joys of discovering the realm of the paranormal create a bond that helps seal the characters with the audience. Whatever the scenario, I was confident I would laugh from these characters, and I did.
There is a lightness to the movie that makes it all the more appealing, settling into pleasurable summer fare. This story is as much about the formation of the Ghostbusters as anything else. In the original film they just sort of have their ghost-busting gear all of a sudden. With the remake we watch the trial and error process of bringing all that tech to life. It’s a fun process to see their business from the ground floor, so to speak, and their fight for larger credibility. Murray himself even shows up as a paranormal debunker who scoffs at their claims. The ladies are the lovable underdogs in this world.
The real reason that Feig’s movies work is the interaction of his boisterous and often brilliant casts, and Ghostbusters is another example. Wiig and McCarthy have a natural chemistry together honed from Bridesmaids, and their back-and-forth banter will often find punch lines in odd places. McCarthy has always been her best under Feig’s direction (seriously go watch Spy if you haven’t). While Abby is a less outspoken character than we’re accustomed to from her, McCarthy still has a commanding presence and is the one who lassos the other funny characters back into a sustainable orbit (“You spell ‘science’ with a Y, and I don’t think you know that that’s wrong”). I’ve stated above my positive feelings on Jones. She brings a welcomed perspective to the team and often serves as the voice of the audience, like a moment where she looks inside a room filled with mannequins, calls it “nightmare stuff,” and wisely keeps walking. McKinnon is the true breakout star, going for broke in a deadpan, anarchic silliness that is Murray-esque. She also displays a funky, near pansexual sense of excitement with the world around her. She licks the radioactive barrels of her proton pack in jubilation. McKinnon is a constant source of mirth in the movie and has some of the best one-liners (“It’s 2040. Our president is a plant!”). Another breakout might be Chris Hemsworth in comedy. His dimwitted and inept receptionist is perhaps too dumb to even function. Hemsworth just commits to his character’s straight-faced stupidity and it produces big laughs.
Not everything in the movie works as well together as the ensemble. The movie’s tone takes a giant leap once the third act commences with its apocalyptic ghost showdowns. You can sense that Feig isn’t nearly as passionate about action heroics and CGI. Example: the movie sets up a large-scale dance sequence and we never see it until the scene appears during the end credits. That seems like a waste. The character arc between Abby and Erin isn’t quite as developed as the movie needs for the emotional re-connection at the very end to hit. As much as I loved McKinnon in the movie, her character is more a collection of quirks than a person. The cameos from the original cast are mostly awful and kill amusement. Watching Dan Akroyd as a cab driver say he “ain’t afraid of no ghosts” made me roll my eyes and wish I could delete this from my memory. The less obvious nods are better fan service, like a character referencing “mass hysteria” or Erin frantically pressing her body against a restaurant’s large glass window. The Stay Puft marshmallow man as a parade float is a nice touch, though. The main villain is feeble but I can see how a dude with a grievous sense of entitlement could itself be a feminist statement on the hostility that women face in today’s world. There are some logical consistency issues when the busters go from trapping ghosts to shooting them and blowing them up, but it wasn’t enough to derail my sense of fun. The worst thing about this Ghostbusters is the new theme song from Fall Out Boy and Missy Elliot.
Is the new Ghostbusters a significant step in terms of feminism or is it overblown as some critics contend? The topic is unavoidable given the spirited furor over this remake; it has the most disliked trailer in YouTube history, though to be fair that was not a good trailer. First I’ll acknowledge that the world doesn’t need the opinion of a heterosexual white male on the topic of inclusion, but I’d like to say that there is something about positive representation. It’s the same reason I approve of Sulu being gay in the newest Star Trek. It’s not for me to say what is and is not empowering for a group of people who often lack positive representation in media. Nor am I arguing that every representation of a group needs to be positive; that swings in a direction where well intentioned “protection” becomes condescending. People can be good. People can be bad. People can be brilliant. People can be dumb. No one pool of DNA has ownership over these human traits. However, the reality of Hollywood is that it is often a poor representation of diversity. It is because of this that I say Ghostbusters deserves some praise for portraying a plot around four women that doesn’t involve boyfriends, weddings, marriages, pregnancies, any sort of romantic coupling, and doesn’t pit them against one another. This is an action movie with a female ensemble, three of whom are in their 40s, and all of whom don’t exactly fit with Hollywood’s standard conception of the attractive female lead. They don’t dress provocatively for the male gaze (the default setting for “strong heroine” in Hollywood is often “sexy deadly”). They don’t make fun of one another’s body types. They stand up for one another when people in power attack. They love what they do. I think there will be a swath of the public that recognizes themselves on screen, maybe for the first time, and I think there is genuine merit to this.
Somewhere amidst all the hype and hate, the new Ghostbusters emerges as a pleasant and enjoyably silly summer comedy. Feig’s movie pays homage to the original, including borrowing many of the general plot beats Force Awakens-style, but steps out onto its own territory. The 2016 Ghostbusters is not slavish to the original but recreates what made it work, a strong core group that meets the experimental and outlandish with droll irony. I think I laughed more with the 2016 Ghostbusters than the 1984 Ghostbusters. It has some flaws and some pacing issues but I was enjoying these characters so much to mind. As a lifelong Ghostbusters fan, I would gladly watch a sequel with these characters and this world once more. This won’t replace the fond feelings I have for the original, nor was it ever supposed to. This all-female Ghostbusters doesn’t take away what fans have loved. It simply adds another chapter with a new batch of entertaining characters, and if a part of the audience can better imagine themselves strapping on the proton packs and going along for the ride, then I don’t see what the harm lies with representation.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Spy (2015)
Melissa McCarthy’s meteoric comedic rise hasn’t been without its missteps, mainly the complaint that she seems stuck in a rut playing aggressively weird and foul-mouthed characters that are growing tiresome. McCarthy is never better than when teamed with her Bridesmaids’ director Paul Feig, and Spy is a welcomed return to form for a great comic actress who relishes being outlandish. The best part of the film is that it’s a character-centric comedy, with McCarthy as Susan Cooper, a CIA agent who works as a handler, the voice on the other end of the earpiece, guiding her partner the handsome Agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law). When Fine is compromised on a mission, Susan unexpectedly finds herself in the field to track down some very bad people. McCarthy does get to be vulgar, but fortunately it’s only one persona she adopts as a mask, and it’s cleverly utilized. Feig’s screenplay makes sure to find different comic beats as it goes, rarely repeating itself and, like any good action movie, finding twists to further develop conflicts. Part of what’s so enjoyable about Spy is how comic scenarios will evolve while staying true to the characters and the central conflict. Also, Feig acquits himself more than well with the film’s semi-slick action photography. The supporting cast is nicely tied into the story and matter and each actor has material to cut loose, none more than Jason Statham (The Expendables) as a hilariously boastful and incredulous agent. His boisterous chest-beating about his past deeds are some of the film’s funniest moments. Consistently funny, witty, and mildly progressive with its heroine, Spy is a vehicle that makes perfect use of McCarthy’s talents and then some.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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The Heat (2013)
Essentially a buddy cop movie with the typically macho roles swapped out to women, The Heat is an intermittently enjoyable action comedy thanks to the chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. The joke ratio of hits to misses has a lot of whiffs but I laughed solidly every ten minutes or so, some of the comedic set pieces were well developed, and McCarthy’s strong ability to improv saved many flailing scenes. I enjoyed that these two women were seen as professionals and didn’t need to be bogged down with the kind of plot elements you’d find in your standard Katherine Heigl vehicle. There isn’t a romantic interest nor a love story; in fact, various guys come up to McCarthy throughout asking why she hadn’t called them back after a one-night stand. It’s a little thing but it establishes that a woman like McCarthy’s can have a fruitful love life and have it be no big deal. The overall plot about a dangerous drug baron with a mole inside the government is given more complexity than necessary, and I’m not sure the action bits feel well integrated into the movie as a whole. Part of this may just be because director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) seems much more interested in grounded, human comedy, but I think it’s mostly because we’d rather be spending more time with our leads arguing. Bullock and McCarthy are an engaging team, their comedic styles nicely ping-ponging off one another, and there are enough ribald gags to justify watching it. The Heat isn’t revolutionary by any sort but maybe, in the end, that’s the point. Also it’s got Dan Bakkeddahl (TV’s Veep) as an albino DEA agent. So there’s that too.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Bridesmaids (2011)
To refer to the bawdy new comedy Bridesmaids as a “female Hangover” seems disingenuous and a facile comparison cooked up in some marketing laboratory. This is nothing like The Hangover, a conceptual comedy that, can we all agree, was a funny movie but not the funniest movie of all time? Bridesmaids is a byproduct of the Judd Apatow comedy factory, and that’s what it feels like. This is no mere concept comedy built around a madcap premise. This is a magnificent character-based comedy that lets the women finally be in on the joke rather than the butt of it. Bridesmaids proves that the ladies can do everything their gender counterparts can do and better.
Annie (Kristen Wiig, who co-wrote the screenplay) is a woman down in the dumps. She lost her bakery due to the crummy economy, she lives with a pair of cretin roommates, and she’s a sleazy creep’s (Jon Hamm, wonderfully douchey) number three choice whenever he needs some casual sex. Her lifelong best friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph), has just gotten engaged and asked Annie to be her Maid of Honor. Annie is threatened by Helen (Rose Byrne), a rich socialite who has grown close to Lillian in Annie’s absence. Helen is also apart of the bridal party and is always at the ready with a classy alternative when Annie stumbles. Annie gets pulled over by state patrol Officer Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) who takes pity on her but warns her to get her taillights fixed. She continues to meet Rhodes at different spots and the two seem to be circling something romantic. Annie’s life seems to be unraveling just as Lillian’s is coming together.
Apatow himself has been accused of making overly guy-centric comedies about rude adolescent man-children (I wouldn’t agree fully with that statement), and people have been rightfully asking when do the girls get a chance? When will the ladies be able to be something other than “love interest” or “device that triggers male character’s metamorphosis into maturity” (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, even from a clear male POV, was rather charitable and empathetic with its feminine characterizations). Well here it is, folks. Bridesmaids let’s the ladies are just as rude, crude, crass, and sexual as the men in the comedy universe. Bridesmaids is a terrific gross-out adult comedy told from a distinct feminine point of view. They can be just as crude as the dudes. But what really sets it apart is that it’s even more so a story about the dynamics of female friendship and the pain of growing apart due to the circumstances of life. Much like the joyous male camaraderie as one of the hallmarks of an Apatow film, we get to witness an entirely female dynamic that feels authentic. These women, their troubles, their friendships, all feel real and deeply felt. Even the supporting characters get a chance to be fleshed out with added dimension rarely seen in mainstream comedies, like Becca (Elli Kemper) and Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey) confiding in each other about their disappointments with married sex. In other movies these ladies would just be “Bridesmaid #3” or “One-note Bridesmaid,” and while Becca and Rita could both be designated as types, they transcend classification when the script allows them to become rounded out as people. Another hallmark of an Apatow production, this is a true ensemble work.
You really do care for these people because of how relatable they are. I’ve never been the operator of a uterus, but that doesn’t stop me from being able to greatly relate to the anxieties of the female characters on screen. I know how significant female friendships are, and that is the central focus of the movie. You buy the relationship between Lillian and Annie, the comfort level they have with one another, the importance, the history, and you feel the pains of Annie’s plight. You feel like the entire bridal party could actually be a group of friends instead of a collection of wacky caricatures. These feel like real people, and people you want to see experience good times. Even the treatment of Helen feels thoughtful. She’s not this shrewish antagonist, but a trophy wife trying to impress the one person she could call a friend in her own life. For Helen, her friendship with Lillian means the world to her. She comes across as another real person, albeit a fabulously looking one. Annie’s romance with Officer Rhodes is indelibly cute and the duo has a warm, charming interaction. You pull for their union. Their relationship spawns a very funny sequence where Annie tries an assortment of illegal driving activities to get his attention. A romantic subplot is expected but that doesn’t mean it has to feel like rote, and in Bridesmaids the romance feels just as authentic and charming as the female friendships.
But don’t let my adoration with its character-work fool you into thinking this is some sort of “chick flick,” a divisive term tragically slapped onto anything female-centric or female-led. Just because there is rarely a Y chromosome on screen does not mean that this is some frilly, frothy sentimental fantasy replete with a “trying on clothes” montage and some sequence where the main characters break out into song in a bar. A wedding central to the plot should hopefully not be disqualifying for male audiences (men don’t get married too?). This is not a story about a crazed, jealous woman who wants to shiv another pretty lady in her pretty lady ribs because she stole her Maid of Honor duties. The cinema is littered with plenty of awful movies that revolve around women battling over petty squabbles. This is not that movie. It is not about who wields the title of Maid of Honor. It is a tale about your friends making new friends, entering new phases of their lives and possibly leaving you behind in the process. It’s about insecurity and holding onto those important people in your life, despite a gradual pulling apart. Relationships change over time, and it’s terrifying to have to adjust to the people closest to you taking lesser stations. It’s terrifying to feel like you’re being pushed out by new people. That sounds fairly universal to me, not some chick flick pabulum.
There were several spots where I laughed so hard I was crying; the film kept me in fits of laughter throughout. The fact that a great majority of the comedy is character-based and not situation-based makes the jokes richer and more satisfying. Even a hard-to-top gross-out sequence where the girls are trying on bridal dresses at a chic store and all start losing control over their bodies due to food poisoning is related to character. Annie took the bridal party to a cheap restaurant to save money, because she’s too proud to admit her own penniless nature and too stubborn to allow Helen to swoop in and claim another victory. So the women all get terrible bouts of food poisoning, which causes them to spew vomit and forces Megan to make one very unfortunate decision with a sink (“Don’t look at me!” she bellows). The movie doesn’t shy away from the gross-out goods but doesn’t overly rely upon them for surefire gags.
The film has several terrific comedic set pieces that connect back to the fractious relationship between Annie and Helen. The two get into a competition when it comes to party toasts. They must upstage the other, asserting who has the closest relationship with Lillian. Just when you think it’s done, one of them grabs the mic again and takes it to another level. Bridesmaids has several comic set pieces that carry on longer than you would expect for a comedy. Director Paul Feig (director of episodes of Arrested Development, The Office, and co-creator with Apatow of Freaks and Geeks) has the resolve to keep the situation alive, steadily building the comic momentum as situations get more and more out of hand, but pulling back before we reach farce levels. The movie goes one step further, convinced that the audience would be there to follow. The movie expertly lays out setups, finds satisfying payoffs, and ties up its storylines in worthwhile ways.
The dialogue is sharp and jokes work on a very fundamental level of context and defying expectation. Annie is terribly nervous to fly. She sits next to a passenger (Wiig’s co-screenwriter, Annie Mumolo) who is also deadly afraid of flying. “I had a dream last night. This plane went down,” she sys. “You were there.” That last part just turns an okay joke into a great joke. There’s a great visual gag where people keep assuming that the unkempt men standing behind Annie at a party is her husband or boyfriend. And then there’s a conversation between Annie and Officer Rhodes about being born for a profession. He encourages her to get back to baking, relating that if he were not a police officer he would still “patrol the streets and… shoot people.” These are just a few small examples I wanted to share that illustrate that, to its core, Bridesmaids is a funny story and knows the fundamentals of comedy.
Wiig has been a comic that I have found grating due to her ever-present dominance of Saturday Night Live. Her stable of wacky characters grew tiresome, but now she gets to play someone who has three dimensions. Annie is often as big an antagonist in the story as Helen. She can be self-destructive and stubborn and when she finally decides to stop being quiet is when people get hurt in her wake. You give her some latitude because, like many comedies, Annie begins as a put-upon character and has to regain her dignity and put her life together. Her life hasn’t turned out as she’s hoped, and how relatable is that? Wiig is a tremendous center for the film. Her rapid-fire eyes communicate so much nervousness and indecision, as well as her crinkly defensive smiles. But she’s also funny, tremendously funny as she loosens up and becomes more aggressive. The film is impeccably cast from top to bottom, another Apatow hallmark.
What Melissa McCarthy does in this movie is incredible. You’ve never seen a person steal a movie at this high degree of theft. McCarthy, best known from the TV show Gilmore Girls, is Megan, the sister of the groom and an unapologetically brash woman with limitless confidence. She’s built like a linebacker but, thankfully, no attention is made to the fact that McCarthy is an overweight woman. That’s not significant to her character, though it does provide for a nice character moment as she confides to Annie late about the horror of being fat in high school. It’s not funny because she’s overweight; she’s just a brash woman without a filter who happens to be overweight. The fact that nobody cracks a joke at her expense or even comments on her weight is refreshing, and a reminder that character is not confined to outward appearance. With all that said, McCarthy is flatly hilarious. There won’t be a scene that McCarthy doesn’t get in one solid belly laugh out of. She is consistently funny from scene to scene, but stays true to her character at the same time. I would love for Megan to have her own spin-off movie much like what Russell Brand earned after his scene-stealing work in Sarah Marshall.
Bridesmaids is a comedy and it is one hell of a comedy. It may no be the best movie under the ever-expanding Apatow banner, but it is easily the funniest film yet. Yes, I said it. Bridesmaids is funnier than Knocked Up, The 40-Year Old Virgin, Superbad, and all the rest. Wiig deserves to become a star and so does McCarthy. This movie left me sore from laughing and giddy with happiness. It’s funny, touching, and genuinely entertaining, and destined to become a modern classic worth revisiting. I foresee this becoming a word-of-mouth sensation this summer, particularly from appreciative female ticket-buyers who feel like they finally have a worthy, relatable, very funny comedy that they can call their own. It’s kind of like the old slogan for female deodorant: strong enough for a man, made for a woman. That may sound too flippant, so I’ll just put it like this: do yourself a favor and RSVP ASAP for the funniest film of 2011 and one destined to charm members of both genders.
Nate’s Grade: A
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