Who you gonna call?
So it wasn't as good as I'd hoped. I'd wanted it to be amazing, just to shut up all the nay-sayers and sexist manbabies bitching about women actually daring to feature in a male-only franchise. And it wasn't amazing. Not even close.
It was fun, don't get me wrong. But the humour felt very forced and quite a lot fell pretty flat. Kate McKinnon's character I just...I don't know what was going on there. But it wasn't funny, just weird. A lot of it just didn't gel, like they'd almost written the dialogue around the jokes, rather than it being a cohesive whole.
Chris Hemsworth's character, Kevin, was funny but in a very unnatural way. Which I guess is the flipside of years and years of women being written as mindless bimbos - it goes to show how acculturated and indoctrinated we are that we hardly notice the trope of the ditzy blonde secretary when she's a woman, but when it's a man it just feels unrealistic. But damn, it must be so hard for all those men to watch a movie where the only central representation of their gender is just a mindless piece of eye-candy! Can't imagine what that must feel like.
I loved all the shout-outs to the originals - their rental agent offering them the firehouse, the cameos from Billy Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Dan Akroyd, Ernie Hudson, the actress who played Janine (I can't remember her name!). Even Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man!
But you know, it was fun. I left the cinema with a big grin on my face, and that's all I ask for, mostly. And let's face, the originals have the virtue of being classics, but they're just as daft and dumb in their own way. But when it's male daft and dumb, and that's automatically better, right?
And I think a movie like this is important, regardless of its quality - simply by virtue of being a big box-office franchise movie, an 'event' movie, aimed at a mainstream audience, but starring women. When do we ever see that? I can't remember the last time I saw a movie starring just women that wasn't a 'women's movie', a chick flick or a mushy drama or romance. Hell, I'm not sure I've ever seen a comedy or action movie that didn't indulge in the male gaze, that didn't have female flesh on display, that didn't cast women purely for their looks, that didn't have female characters solely to serve as eye candy or romance or sex. So for that, if nothing else, this movie is a milestone. Just a shame it's not as good as I'd hoped, because there's bound to be idjits blaming that on the fact that there are women in it, regardless of the directing or the plot or the script.
It was fun, don't get me wrong. But the humour felt very forced and quite a lot fell pretty flat. Kate McKinnon's character I just...I don't know what was going on there. But it wasn't funny, just weird. A lot of it just didn't gel, like they'd almost written the dialogue around the jokes, rather than it being a cohesive whole.
Chris Hemsworth's character, Kevin, was funny but in a very unnatural way. Which I guess is the flipside of years and years of women being written as mindless bimbos - it goes to show how acculturated and indoctrinated we are that we hardly notice the trope of the ditzy blonde secretary when she's a woman, but when it's a man it just feels unrealistic. But damn, it must be so hard for all those men to watch a movie where the only central representation of their gender is just a mindless piece of eye-candy! Can't imagine what that must feel like.
I loved all the shout-outs to the originals - their rental agent offering them the firehouse, the cameos from Billy Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Dan Akroyd, Ernie Hudson, the actress who played Janine (I can't remember her name!). Even Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man!
But you know, it was fun. I left the cinema with a big grin on my face, and that's all I ask for, mostly. And let's face, the originals have the virtue of being classics, but they're just as daft and dumb in their own way. But when it's male daft and dumb, and that's automatically better, right?
And I think a movie like this is important, regardless of its quality - simply by virtue of being a big box-office franchise movie, an 'event' movie, aimed at a mainstream audience, but starring women. When do we ever see that? I can't remember the last time I saw a movie starring just women that wasn't a 'women's movie', a chick flick or a mushy drama or romance. Hell, I'm not sure I've ever seen a comedy or action movie that didn't indulge in the male gaze, that didn't have female flesh on display, that didn't cast women purely for their looks, that didn't have female characters solely to serve as eye candy or romance or sex. So for that, if nothing else, this movie is a milestone. Just a shame it's not as good as I'd hoped, because there's bound to be idjits blaming that on the fact that there are women in it, regardless of the directing or the plot or the script.