Ghostbusters

One star for Kristen Wiig's sincere effort. Otherwise lame, pointless, and dumb. Probably the most pathetic rip-off ever. A direct copy of the 1984 classic including the theme song and logo, without any invention of its own. Unless you count the character of Jillian Holtzman, and I really don't. (11/18/2016)

I don't have a good feeling about the new Ghostbusters at all - apart from the feeling that the film is completely useless. It didn't impress me, didn't offend me, I liked the female cast quite a bit, but they had nothing to act with, and the humor was so strangely tasteless and odorless that you couldn't even tell what the writers had come up with and what was improvisation gone wrong. The opening scene was good, as was the team's first encounter with the ghost, but the longer the film got, the weirder it got, the more awkward the humor became, and even every cameo role the actors from the original Ghostbusters had in it was a pointless addition (especially Bill Murray). For me, it's just not a good comedy, but there was a dad sitting in front of me in the movie theatre with two teenagers (who obviously knew Ghostbusters, as they recognized the references to the original and danced in their seats whenever the familiar musical theme was played) and they laughed almost all the time. I believe that even this film will find its fans. Three and a half stars. (07/30/2016)

The new Ghostbusters is very weak and below average, but otherwise its completely ordinary and as such does not deserve all the media attention it received. The fact that Paul Feig cast women in the lead roles is not the issue. The fact is that he cast actresses who, in an effort to be funny, are usually only convulsively awkward and embarrassing, they come up with nonsense when improvising humor, and they also painfully mine humor from gags that stop being funny after about five seconds. Compared to the original from 1984, Ghostbusters is worse in every way, from the level of humor, wherein clever jokes and humor with a serious face were replaced by the actors being loud, rolling of the eyes and falsetto signing to the new version of the Ghostbusters theme. Only the tricks look better today, but they don’t help the film out much. (07/27/2016)

Probably the first movie that would make me feel sorry if I gave it a worse rating than I actually gave. At the same time, it would undoubtedly deserve it. It actually shamelessly copies the legendary Ghostbusters from the 1980s, from which it borrowed everything and didn’t bring anything new to the table. Except for the fact that it’s pretty well shot, and the special effects also aren’t worthless. On top of that, Chris Hemsworth excels here and makes this into a real comedy. I would be lying if I said I didn’t laugh. Unfortunately, it wasn’t because of the girls. It’s obvious that Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy have a completely different movie training than Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon. Particularly Kate was very off. Anyway, I was curious about the result, what can I tell you. In the end, however, it wasn’t worse than I expected, and I also lived to see the cameos of the old cast in the end. Nobody should mess with the theme song ever again, though. That would be really nice. (12/21/2016)

According to the reviews and comments here, I was expecting a disaster of greater proportions, but that is not what the new Ghostbusters are. It is not even close to the original two films from the 80s - there is no need to discuss that. And so we're left to think of this film as a slightly misguided reboot of a time-honoured brand and an attempt at gender swapping to bring balance to the imaginary universe. There were a few jokes that worked, but for the most part, the humor was lost during their execution. As for the actors, the film relies heavily on the physical acting of Melissa McCarthy and the sassy temper of Leslie Jones, plus the fact that Chris Hemsworth, oddly enough, was quite good in the role of the dumb secretary. In short, it's one of those cases where they took too big a bite, and tried in vain to bring to the present day a classic for which that old-school look was a big part of its success. (07/30/2016)