Ghostbusters 2016 Review & Analysis

hello everyone this is a review of the Ghostbusters reboot movie that came out this year now I just watched this movie recently and it was a little bit rubbish to be honest was it the worst movie ever made no it had a lot of problems but there were a few things I liked about it too so I guess overall I'd call it mediocre and that's not a good place to be for a comedy movie I mean something guy that makes you laugh or it doesn't and for the most part this movie just didn't make me laugh now the original 1984 Ghostbusters movie was really good and the new movie is in most respect just a remake of that one so I thought it'd be interesting to compare the two now in a lot of ways discussing comedy can be quite difficult you know people have different senses of humor and they find different things funny some people like understated character driven comedies and some people are objectively wrong so to save myself from saying in my opinion roughly a hundred times I'll just leave a disclaimer here that all my declarative sentences about what is and is not funny they're my own opinions you're free to disagree and I annoyingly have to make a brief note here about the controversy surrounding the release of the movie the internet was pretty mad about this movie before it even came out and a lot of dumb people said a lot of dumb things so let's first off list some points which are not the reason that the movie isn't good one because it's got women in it no that doesn't matter at all - because of Leslie Jones or any other actor or actors know everyone who's in the movie is at least a capable actor missed cast maybe arguable but this wasn't the fault of the actors free because of how poorly it was marketed the awful trailer or anything else and there's a lot to talk about there but I'm only interested in what's actually in the movie right now so what were the actual reasons why laughter quickly googling how to analyze movies I've identified a few key areas where I think the reboot underperforms compared to the original firstly the script certain things are missing and certain things are in there that don't need to be secondly the characters characterizations very patchy and the characters break character to easily character and thirdly the editing and this is the big one for me personally and the movie was edited by someone who I'm sorry to say is not good at identifying things which are funny now the main problem with the comedy in this comedy movie is that it appears to have been written directed and edited with the following principle of mind jokes are funny right so the more jokes you do the funnier it is comedy doesn't work that way I'm afraid the movie has a lot of funny moments but they're stifled by the surrounding unfunny moments comedy to a large extent relies on establishing and maintaining a mood and it's better to have no joke at all in a bad joke that kills the mood bad jokes prey on good jokes and eat them but we'll talk more about that in a little while let's first talk briefly about the story now both the new movie and the original broadly follow the same basic plot some scientists who believe in ghosts get kicked out of their college or colleges develop technology to catch ghosts start a ghost catching business and then they have to face off against some larger paranormal threat and they end up saving the city now the new Ghostbusters makes a few changes to the particulars of the storyline some of which are fine but some of which I think actively harm the story now the worst of these for me was having the government's already know about the ghosts and engaging in a conspiracy to cover them up and we're not frauds we are legitimate science they throw we know you're not frauds because we have been monitoring this situation quite closely agents Hawkins and Roarke are with Homeland Security so we've been investigating this extremely quietly you see this kind of robs the Ghostbusters of their unique thing for me you know the ghost thing in the old Ghostbusters the government's represented by the mayor and Walter pack they don't believe in ghosts they've got to be convinced of it in the new movie when the ghostbusters meet the mayor is like yeah ghosts we know it's like oh well I guess people already know about ghosts then kind of makes the Ghostbusters less special and I'm just going to quickly run through some other structural or storyline changes that I felt were detrimental patty joins the Ghostbusters for no reason in the first movie Winston just walked in looking for a job in the new movie patty is one of the Ghostbusters first customers and that's fine by itself there's nothing wrong with that I might even like that more than the original if they gave patty a solid reason to actually want to join the Ghostbusters it feels like there was a scene cut where patty got fired over the ghost finge you know maybe she keeps telling customers about the ghost or her boss fires her for bringing the Ghostbusters there or something like that so then she joins the Ghostbusters because they're the only ones who believe her about the ghost instead she just turns up and demands a job for no clear reason she even complains about the job later on in the movie I had a good job at the MTA was it perfect no of course it wasn't perfect for a team what everybody was alive and the audience is thinking well why did you leave the old job again it wouldn't surprise me if there's a deleted scene of patty getting fired to be honest no money issues in the original Ghostbusters Venkman torques dance in to take Stan's Stan's stance so how you say that I I've written it here I've never said it out loud stamps in the original Ghostbusters Bill Murray talks dan Aykroyd into taking out an extra mortgage on his house to finance the start of the business and they're basically broke when they get their first real job and I like this finance element that it's largely missing from the new movie they don't even build the theater guy for catching the demon ghosts finger and there's no explanation for how they're able to finance developing all the ghosts tech no getting famous montage in the original movie there's a montage scene of the Ghostbusters in the media completing more jobs and generally show in the passage of time in the new movie they catch one ghost and they're immediately like immediately on the news and famous and I don't know it just felt a bit rushed too much action near the end of the movie and this is intense a problem with the structure the editing and just the overall general direction but whatever I'm putting it here in the original Ghostbusters what action there was always serve the needs of the story or the comedy the action scene near the end of the new movie goes on entirely too long and serves no real purpose beyond showing off a bunch of special-effects baton there's a few genuinely embarrassing moments featuring holtzman but we'll get to her in a bit now all of these are flaws but none of them are really movie killers they'd all be excusable if the movie were funnier so let's talk about why it wasn't and here's what I think is the most glaring problem with the comedy in the new Ghostbusters movie everyone tries to be funny almost every single character large or small is played for Laughs in a very overstated way now in the original Ghostbusters movie the only character to intentionally crack jokes at any point I think is franc Minh every single of the characters played pretty much straight scenes with Venkman and one of the character resemble a classic double act routine with Venkman as the comic and the other character whoever it is as the straight man not that the other characters aren't funny Janene is funny Egon is funny this total attendant trying to hide the ghost from the guests is funny but they're not trying to be funny the humor comes from their characters and the situation that they're in the contrast of characters can be a funny joke in and of itself Stan's walks out of the elevator tense and serious and Venkman follows calmly now neither is funny by itself but together the contrast gets a laugh or consider venkman's introductory scene where Venkman is lying to the two students about the results of an ESP test now no one is trying to be funny in this scene no one's saying funny things it's just a funny situation we're learning about venkman's character he's manipulative he's selfish he doesn't take his work seriously and the humor comes from the simple dramatic irony of the audience being able to see the cards while the students can't now in the new Ghostbusters movie well all the Ghostbusters are played funny nearly all the time for a start but so is almost every other character this tour guide has to be funny the FBI guy has to be funny the college dean has to be funny the food delivery man even has to be funny even the antagonist has to be funny and then the world shall bend him up oh okay I apologize that looked nastier than identity one of the only characters to be played straight is the old fashioned Dean of Columbia University played by Charles dance who not so coincidentally say is probably my favorite line in the movie dr. Bronstein saw this on reddit it was reblogged from a site entitled ghost news not a publication I'd heard of now the derision with which he says reblogged from a site entitled ghost news is funny because we know his character from earlier and understand that he would hate to say that sentence at no point does Charles dance break character and start riffing and telling awful jokes and speaking of let's talk about the Ghostbusters themselves now the early scenes in the new Ghostbusters actually gave me hope that it was going to be really good the opening conflict between Aaron and Abbey is completely fine in my opinion I feel like we get a sense of who these characters are at the start of the movie you know Aaron is high-strung she takes herself and I work seriously she believes in ghosts but doesn't want anyone to know Abbey is less serious believes in ghosts and wants to prove it and she's angry at Aaron for a perceived betrayal you know it's not Hamlet by any means but the original Ghostbusters characters weren't Hamlet either you know they're fine characters for a comedy movie about ghosts they're even given a pretty deep personal reason to want to prove ghosts exist when I was eight years old the mean old lady that lived next door died and that night I woke up and she was standing at the foot of my bed just staring at me she did that every night for almost a year which I thought was a bit serious and probably overkill but you know I'm not really complaining and early on there's some okay - actually pretty good moments with these characters I liked when Aaron's arguing with this guy and pretending that she didn't write the book I liked her trying to hide her monitor from Charles dance I like Abbey and Aaron arguing about the book you know it's not hilarious or anything but it's fine character building now the big letdown for me is how quickly the movie was willing to completely abandon these characters for example at one point a paranormal skeptic played by a very tired looking Bill Murray comes to see the ghosts they captured then Erin because she wants to prove ghosts exist so much lets the ghosts out and it murders Bill Murray so the Ghostbusters essentially kill a man which is weird enough by itself to be honest but then not 10 seconds later well Torme at the Wonder a ghost threw him out the window oh you mean like Patrick Swayze like you shouldn't behind you make it's pottery yeah like Patrick Swayze that then we were all dancing and a summer camp in the Catskills and then we sat down and he was behind me and we made a vase oh you're combining the two I combined your apples please oh you know what's a good one Roadhouse I love point brazen thieves a point great come on at the end with a big wave now why are they doing a little Patrick Swayze movie riff bit with this police officer they just saw someone die and I'm thinking well they just caused the death of a man why don't they care about that all the early scenes established Aaron as a self serious person who was sensitive to what other people think about it but at the first chance to do some jokey jokes that all gets tossed out and I mean if they're not going to bother trying to have consistent characterization they may as well just have characters with seemingly no motivation whatsoever who act completely randomly all the time and speaking of let's talk about Holtzman now Holtzman isn't developed enough to even be called a character a Lee she's a character trait she's wacky when she's introduced she's not really given a clear motivation but she seems pretty excited about going to see a ghost so I'm thinking okay she wants to see a ghost that's her thing but when she does see a ghost could you pee eating right now once your Bob so I'm thinking oh she doesn't care about seeing a ghost then but now she seems excited she saw her ghost again like what is she doing what is this character ever doing in fact almost every time Holtzman was on screen when I watched this movie I was solely wondering what she was doing and why she's like a character void it's impossible to have an opinion about Holtzman and the sad thing here is that all it would have taken was a few lines of exposition at her introduction to give us some grounding in reality you know you can do the wacky scientist thing and well I mean Egon in the original movie was that to an extent but on the knee fold walk eNOS you still need to have an actual identifiable human of course Holtzman is given a few lines of humanizing dialogue in the movie backgrounder a little I didn't think that I would ever really have a friend until I met Abby and then I feel like I have a family we have my own and I love thank you I mean that was like a real thing right there I was like so real I'm Patty's right that was so real right there if only something like that could have came near the start of the movie instead of five minutes from the end so I didn't waste two hours wondering if Holtzman was human or not and as for patty I don't have too much to say about her to be honest she's fine overall except oddly enough for everything that they put in the trailer she does break character least often out of any other ghostbusters so she gets a point for that and speaking of Holtzman and characters who aren't really characters a Kevin who is stupid so stupid as to not even be a human actually I mentioned earlier that I think Hemsworth was miscast at not because he's not funny though he isn't in this I mean he might be a funny guy elsewhere but unless he's dreadful and no I think he's miscast because he's too famous and he thus gets way too much screen time for what should be a minor character you can have a minor character who's incredibly stupid that's fine but having several scenes that foe is solely on that character where the only joke is that they are stupid well that gets tedious very quickly and maybe it's just me but a lot of the jokes where the punchline is Kevin is stupid are a little stupid would it be okay if I bring my cat to work sometimes he has major anxiety problems you know what I love to let your cat live here with you but I have a pretty severe cat allergy oh I don't have a cat it's a dog these names my cat it your dog's name is my cat amok hat your dog's name is Mike last name hat with full name is muggle hat what the hell are they even talking about honestly just because he's dumb doesn't mean the writing has to be done you can have a cleverly constructed joke about a character being stupid okay one last time these are small but the ones out there are far away small faraway a character being stupid should rarely be the means by which a joke is told rather than the punchline in and of itself there's only one thing Kevin saves in the movie that actually got a laugh out of me and that's just because it's a line lifted out of the original Ghostbusters what do you want Ghostbusters what do you want so just to be fair here before I move on to talk about editing I'd like to point out some moments that I actually rarely enjoyed in the new movie I like when Aaron's trying to warn the mayor about what's going to happen um okay that that's a dumpster but I like when this thing starts spinning around really fast I didn't even know what did that I like when the camera footage cuts to a YouTube video playing in Charles dancers office I like when Abby goes to hit the bomb like a baseball and misses although it's not edited very well but whatever I like the idea so I'll give it a pass I like when Aaron is having a tantrum and picks up the bomb to throw it and abbien Holtzman freaked out maybe I just think bombs are funny I don't know now all of these at least got a smile out to me but if you notice something about all these moments they're all physical comedy and the new movie is generally added strongest when it keeps the humor nonverbal which is the nicer way around of saying that the movies at its weakest when the characters talk and bugger me do they talk I know that's what they're saying but I'm saying the cat's already out so it's hard to put the cat back time the hustle bang but that's why they have that say because they got out of the bag and put it back in I can the baffles some people and talk and talk until any actual comedy presents been run into the ground a few visuals actually get ruined to a certain degree because the characters just won't shut up for five seconds let's look at one instance of the same joke that's in both the old Ghostbusters and the new let's get ready switch me on alright turning the machine on whoo boy she's got an impressive purr okay so the same fish you will joke you know recoiling from the proton pack being turned on has much less impact in the new movie because for whatever reason someone involved in the production decided that Melissa McCarthy should be yelling over the top of it and the constant talking isn't just background noise the reluctance to edit it out or cut away from it artificially extends the runtime of a whole buncha scenes long past the point where the jokes dead and there's a lot of these scenes but we're just going to be looking at a select few a first up is patty delivering the hearse so fundamentally what if anything is the funny thing about this scene well on one level it's a simple reversal of expectation the other ghostbusters weren't expecting the car to be a hearse and then the car is a hearse now as a British man that's enough for me I'm happy with that right there you've got your reversal of expectation a little irony in the fact that the Ghostbusters drive a hearse job done now the problem is this premise isn't funny enough to sustain a full conversation about it now for all the non British people in the audience I'll allow the premise one more joke maybe like the following hope you check to see there wasn't a body in the back oh I don't think so I don't really know you didn't check I mean I was in a hurry I checked to see if we had gas that was more important now if I were editing this scene I would have cut to the next scene right there Erin jokes that there might be a body in the back of the hearse and it turns out that patty doesn't actually know if there's a body in the back of the hearse it's not exactly a knee-slapper but it's good enough that is until the premise get stretched way too thin so there is body the house with Jack she likes that type of stuff yeah I can think of seven good uses of a cadaver today no dr. Frankenstein we got to turn in the body if there's one in there there don't do that too many times when I was watching this movie I was just waiting for the characters to stop talking so that the story would progress let's look at another example like this and while you're watching have a think about where you would put the cut to the next scene this is an institution of higher learning and if you guys want to study ghosts do it somewhere else because I have two words for you let me guess get out no he's gonna say suck it he's not gonna say second suck it you were right yeah oh my gosh I think it might be a ghost oh no it's not it's just a bird by there's the door later days can you hear this let me turn it up oh my god this is incredibly immature behavior caught it just a minor setback Oh guys I think we can really do this goes on a bit doesn't it so what's the comedic element to this scene it's that you'd expect the Dean of a university to be very professional and mature a bit like Charles dance say but this Dean is very unprofessional and immature so what you want to do once the scenes fulfilled its narrative purpose is cut on the most emphatic instance of that and if we do that this is an institution of higher learning and if you guys want to study ghosts do it somewhere else because I have two words for you let me guess get out no he's gonna say suck it he's not gonna suck it just a minor setback Oh guys I think we can really do this and would you look at that that's much better and let's look at another scene that's in desperate want of editing Aaron gets fired by Charles dance after he sees the YouTube video and then there's an awful drawn-out scene of Aaron walking down a hallway pretending to not have been fired so everyone and it's unnecessary and it's crap and it goes on forever now in the original Ghostbusters stansson Venkman get fired by the Dean and we immediately cut to them drinking outside and we get it they've been fired we don't need it spelled out it's funnier if it happens off screen you could cut the whole walking down the corridor riffing on being fired but entirely and just go straight from Charles dance to the next scene well I hope you're happy that video you posted got me fired well you could go even further with it and leave the entire firing just implied with something like this who is that well I hope you're happy that video you posted got me fired Sony send me all the raw sausage I'll cut a good movie out of it I promise it'll only be 40 minutes long but I'll be really good now the first Ghostbusters movie was much more sparing with the dialog and they knew how to cut away after a good line do you have any hobbies I collect spores molds and fungus if that line was in the new movie they'd probably follow it with 45 seconds of awful improv riffing about fungus now I don't know where the problems with this movie originated in the writing the direction the acting or wherever but if there's bad jokes in there then it needed an editor with the ability to cut them out and that just didn't happen I'm afraid overall I'd call Ghostbusters 2016 a spooktacular summer hit but the whole family can enjoy nine stars

Channel: Shaun

Views: 166,564

Rating: 4.819263 out of 5

Keywords: ghostbusters, ghostbusters answer the call, ghostbusters review, ghostbusters 2016

Id: gcXszrAs5ik

Length: 25min 26sec (1526 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 10 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/NI-Gunner]

Here's my thoughtful analysis that has nothing to do with women:

Ghostbusters (2016) is shit in just about every way a film can be shit, in terms of storytelling, comedy and character development.

[u/diddykongisapokemon]

Are people really still talking about this movie? Why does anyone still care?

[u/[deleted]]

I wish this guy would lean away from proving conservatives wrong and stick to movie stuff. His videos about cinema sins are hilarious and on point but he shifting his content to “owning the alt right”which is too easy and kind of boring. I’m liberal but even I can only take so much.

[u/VigilantLance]

Here’s my analysis: The new ghostbusters film was shit. Shit writing. Shit script. Shit cgi. Aaaaaaand most importantly! Shit actors. They all happened to be women. They were shit.

Deal with it.

[u/blazinbobby]

They beat the main villain by shooting him in his ghost dick. 'Nuff said.