A lifeless reincarnation

It was with much anticipation that I went to see Ghostbusters, the contemporary reboot of the comedy classic with all of the male roles switched to star female leads, and vice versa.

It is with much dismay that I must report how lifeless a comedy it is. I wanted to like it. Heck, I wanted to love it, but when the heart monitor doesn’t have a pulse, there’s no option but to pull the plug.

Ghostbusters stinks.

Okay, that’s being a bit too harsh. I will admit that I really enjoyed one of the four main characters (Jillian Holtzmann, played by Kate McKinnon of Saturday Night Live). I also really appreciated the John Belushi-esque energy of Neil Casey, who plays Rowan North. Ghostbusters lore tells of how the brilliant and manic Belushi was intended to be in the 1984 original if it were not for his untimely passing. Casey’s performance was like resurrecting the comedic genius, albeit in a somewhat more reserved state.

And yet the list of what I didn’t enjoy is far longer. Ghostbusters 2016 plays more like a eulogy to Ghostbusters 1984 than anything akin to a self-contained comedy. In fact, the funniest and most original moment in the first 10 minutes of this film was a fart joke, I’m sad to say.

In this film, Kristen Wiig plays Dr. Erin Gilbert, a university professor about to get tenure until a ghost from her past – literally – puts her back in the paranormal. She ends up reunited with Melissa McCarthy’s Dr. Abby Yates on a project that Yates has been hard at work with eccentric engineer Dr. Holtzmann.

Yup. They’re out to prove the existence of ghosts.

That proof comes courtesy of New York transit worker Patty Tolan who sees an apparition in the train tunnels. The four of them team up to form an organization called the Department of the Metaphysical Examination. Ghostbusters, for short.

Naturally, the timing is apt as an occultist named Rowan North is trying to bring about the apocalypse by setting off a series of devices that amplify paranormal activity in specific locations. He’s trying to unleash hundreds of thousands of apparitions to wreak havoc upon the public.

Now, in the realm of reboots, there are some things that work and some that don’t. Sure, you want to pay homage to the original but do so in a way that resembles a tip of the hat. Don’t feel that it’s necessary to offer key minor roles to cast members from the source material. It doesn’t lend any more legitimacy to the new work and frankly, it just comes across as blatant overkill.

Ghostbusters, sadly, is not the drop-dead gutbuster that you were hoping it would be. Sure, there was laughter in the theatre but this film will not live a long life like its predecessor. We waited years and suffered through endless hints at a sequel, and endless stalls on progress. We cried when Harold Ramis died. We wondered why the spectre of the colossally unfunny Ghostbusters 2 wasn’t invoked more.

We didn’t need all of the commotion and hype after so long just to be let down so tremendously. Not even Rick Moranis would come out of retirement to revisit Louis Tully. Instead, we got a frenetic and loud atrocity of computer-generated poltergeists with extra slime. I left the theatre with a headache, not a busted gut.