7/10
Funny, Entertaining, but a little Clichéd.
18 July 2016
The female led Ghostbusters reboot is finally here, and I've got to say I think it's a pretty good movie. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding this film, mostly from internet hacks who were clinging to the sexist chant that "women aren't funny." Ghostbusters is clever and funny, features cool special effects, but is admittedly a little clichéd. That being said this film is very good, and I would say don't let the audience reviews online sway your opinion too much.

For those who don't know anything about the Ghostbusters reboot, it's being made by the same people that made Bridesmaids. Bridesmaids is one of the funnier recent comedies, but i'll go so far as to say I enjoyed Ghostbusters more. While Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig are their reliable selves, the show stealers for me were Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, and Chris Hemsworth. All 3 brought an unexpected level of humor and screen presence, and almost every joke delivered by Leslie Jones had me laughing out loud. Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon may have entered this film as almost exclusively SNL stars, but after this film I think you'll see them in a lot more.

The rebooted Ghostbusters, much like the original, uses a lot of special effects, in an attempt to mix big budget CGI with comedy. The original Ghostbusters, sort of broke ground by proving that comedy and big budget special effects could work together, nowadays it's commonplace as every Marvel movie uses the same approach. That being said the effects in this movie, especially the sound design, were cool and looked good. I will say that some of the effects reminded me of Star Wars, but they aren't the first and they won't be the last to copy that movie.

The only big problem I had with the movie was that it felt somewhat derivative. Many moments in the movie it felt like they were nodding to the original instead of trying to be different. That along with the reliance of Paul Fieg on the overly talkative humor, where characters refuse to ever let the audience figure a joke out for themselves, are really the only things that seemed weak in the film. That being said major fans of actions films should beware that the action sequences are nothing special, and some characters aren't all that well developed.

So in essence Ghostbusters is no masterpiece, it's really not even a great movie, but it is pretty entertaining. The cast is great in the movie, many of the jokes worked, the effects were cool, the soundtrack was nostalgic fun, and the movie even featured cameos from the entire cast of the original, that are still with us. For those who feel weary because the online fan reviews and ratings have been bad, I fear many of those reviewers never saw the movie, and instead gave the movie a bad rating out of hatred that women are in a traditionally male movie. This is a fairly entertaining comedy, and regardless of what you've heard if you like comedies check this movie out.
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