Monday 26 December 2016

Ghostbusters

I'm a guy. And I'm a blogger. So I hated this movie, right? Wrong! It's great fun and channeled the spirit of the 1984 original while making a mark in its own right.

Sci-fi geekery is not the preserve of unmarried males anyway so wasn't it about time Hollywood recognised that a good script, decent visual and set up gags and great special effects work for audiences of men, women, hamsters, avocados and Cadillacs alike, regardless of who is starring?

Actually scrub that, the stars still matter: they have to be well cast. And they are. Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones are nailed on perfect for their roles and even have the same SNL pedigree as original stars Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray, both of whom add their support for the revamp with amusing cameos. (Ernie Hudson and Sigourney Weaver turn up in the end credits sequences too, just to flip the bird at the Internet haters who poured scorn on the idea of an all-female cast before a shot had been filmed.)

Slime, spookiness, freakery, physical comedy, gizmos, science gags: the ingredients that made the first version a success are all here with the neat twist of the giant big bad spectre during the finale being a distortion of their own Caspar-like logo. My only complaint is that nobody is warned not to cross the streams with the ghost guns. Or ecto-lasers. Or whatever nerds insist we call them.

I'm pointlessly in love with Kate McKinnon who is one of the finest character actors of her generation and utterly uninterested in the romantic attentions of my gender. But she doesn't dominate as all four leads share out the lines and the action to ensure this is the same sort of ensemble affair that SNL-cast movies always were in their 80s heyday. Oh and Chris Hemsworth has proper comic chops, the handsome, muscled bastard!

Ghostbusters 2 was shit back in the day. Can we have a sequel that doesn't lose the thrills, spills and charm of this one, please? I ain't afraid of no ranty, internet virgins who still live with their moms.

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