Bustin' Ghosts Is. . . Something

I had the opportunity to see the most recent Ghostbusters two weekends ago. It was OK. I only laughed out loud once, and I can't even remember specifically what it was. Something during the scene where Abby (Melissa McCarthy) was possessed and Patty (Leslie Jones) is trying to fight her while keeping Jillian (Kate McKinnon) from falling to the street. To be fair, I was typing last Thursday's post while watching.

Doesn't mean the movie was devoid of humor, just very little hit me as really funny. Some stuff got smiles, but not many guffaws. But I'm not sure how much of the original Ghostbusters got me that way, either. Some of Bill Murray's stuff for sure, but then there's the whole aspect of Venkman being a creep, which kind of takes some of the fun looking back on it now.

I did keep getting distracted by how much McKinnon's character reminded me of Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. Something about the big grin she had the whole time, or her casual indifference towards risking people's lives, some aspect of her hair, I don't know. Was not expecting that. Bullshit fan theory: the whole plot of the movie was engineered by her character as an excuse to test out the stuff she was building. I'm not being serious.

I did wonder about Leslie Jones' character being the only non-scientist, considering Ernie Hudson got the same deal back in the day. Although I thought I read something online that she had a degree in history, but maybe that was wishful fan theorizing. A knowledge of history or how to find information on old buildings or events would seem to be useful for dealing with dead things.

I wondered at one point if the movie was trying to say the villain, Rowan, wouldn't have felt so alone and angry if he had made a legit effort to reach out to people, rather than being scornful and derisive. When he goes to the concert to free a spirit, and is pretending to be a fan, one of the other attendees randomly high fives him. Doesn't know Rowan, just sees someone else who says they're excited to be there, and sure, high five. And he was friendly, in his own way, towards Patty the first time they crossed paths. But the rest of the time people seem to openly call him weirdo and not be very friendly, so I suppose the contrast was meant to be how he takes that and uses it as an excuse to destroy the world. Meanwhile the Ghostbusters have to deal with dudes constantly doubting them, dismissing them on any pretext, and they still do their science thing and save the world.

The big fight with the ghosts at the end was, I don't know. They were using the proton packs to sort of lasso the ghosts, then swing them into other ghosts? Doesn't seem terribly effective, but OK. The parts of the film where they're hanging out, building stuff, getting excited to investigate ghosts, I liked those parts. The four actresses play off each other well, the cameos didn't add much, some of the action was good, some of it not so good, you get the idea. It wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible. The kind of movie I could see letting play in the background while I did something else (like work on a post for this blog!), and I'd look up when it got to a part I liked.