I've really wanted a female president, even hoped Elizabeth Warren would primary Obama in 2012.
That was, of course, before Warren sold out progressives by failing to endorse Bernie Sanders before the first Super Tuesday. My point is, I've long wanted to see a female president of the United States. But I've never wanted Hillary to be president. I've always felt that she's a disastrous first female president.
That brings us to the new, all female, new Ghostbusters movie. I went to see it Friday, the opening day. I loved the original Ghostbusters. It was smart and fun. I wanted this one to be the same. It wasn't. It was a huge disappointment. The writers attempted to resurrect the witty repartee that worked so well between the original cast, the Ghostbusters-- Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson-- and the people they interacted with. I found the banter between the new cast to be annoying, not entertaining.
For example. in their effort to reverse genderize the film, they cast Chris Hemsworth as the male equivalent of an airhead secretary. He's actually very good at it, irritatingly so. But the original secretary, played by Annie Potts, is actually smart and helpful and a good person. The 2016 airhead is worthless and a creepy narcissist.
The CGI is decent, though not that much better than we'd expect 30+ years after the original.
The characters were weak and failed to inspire me to care about them.
The biggest problem was the story. It was too much a takeoff on the original ghostbusters, and sadly, they did a bad job of it. By the point in the movie when I should have been on the edge of my seat, waiting for the next thing to happen, I was, instead, falling asleep, anxious for it to end.
Sadly this movie fell far below my hopes. I'm not even sure I'd recommend spending the time watching it for free on a service like Netflix or HBO.
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