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Auggie

(31,067 posts)
Fri Jul 15, 2016, 11:50 AM Jul 2016

New ‘Ghostbusters’ haunted by casting errors

Mick LaSalle / San Francisco Chronicle

When you have women as funny as Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy making movies, it’s smart to find ways to bring them together. And it was a good idea — or seemed like a good idea — to remake “Ghostbusters” as a vehicle for women like them. The original was a massive hit, after all, and there hasn’t been a “Ghostbusters” movie since 1989. But partly because of a weak script and partly from mistakes in casting, this new version collapses.

To put it bluntly, Wiig and McCarthy are funny, but Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones aren’t. McKinnon, in particular, is shockingly out of place, and she helps drag down the movie.

SNIP

McKinnon plays Jillian, the engineer of the group, and all she offers the movie is astonishingly unfunny and impenetrable shtick — wild facial expressions and gestures, out-of-context reactions and odd voices for no particular reason. The performance is a wild mix of vanity and self-consciousness. Half the time McKinnon looks uncomfortable on camera, and the other half she looks as if she should be.

This doesn’t mean that scenes between McCarthy, Wiig and McKinnon are one-third bad. No, they’re all bad, because a machine doesn’t work with a major part missing. There are moments here in which Wiig looks at McKinnon with a certain puzzlement and disdain, and you have to wonder if this is Erin looking at Jillian or just Wiig looking at another actress and thinking, “Just stop it, already.” Then add into the mix Jones, whose role as a transit worker turned ghostbuster is completely flat and unrealized, and you have the equivalent of Wiig and McCarthy trying to climb the mountain of comedy, each with a corpse tied around one leg.

FULL REVIEW: http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/New-Ghostbusters-haunted-by-casting-errors-8378505.php

I'll have to see the film, but I understand what he means about McKinnon from her work on SNL. Some of it is good but a lot falls flat.

6 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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New ‘Ghostbusters’ haunted by casting errors (Original Post) Auggie Jul 2016 OP
Hollywood! No fucking imagination! Remakes and sequels. longship Jul 2016 #1
Hollywood has been out of ideas for awhile davidn3600 Jul 2016 #5
They did- LOL TexasBushwhacker Jul 2016 #6
Too bad because McKinnon would be the only cast member I'm interested in watching. n/m ProudToBeBlueInRhody Jul 2016 #2
Don't rely on the reviewer's opinion ... Auggie Jul 2016 #3
Meh, I'm very picky about what I see in theaters ProudToBeBlueInRhody Jul 2016 #4

longship

(40,416 posts)
1. Hollywood! No fucking imagination! Remakes and sequels.
Fri Jul 15, 2016, 12:03 PM
Jul 2016

All rubbish!

Next they'll remake Hitchcock's Psycho. That's right, they already did that, plus two sequels. Or his Rear Window. That's right. They did that one, too.

Meanwhile Disney cranks out animated musicals, as if that were still a thing.

 

davidn3600

(6,342 posts)
5. Hollywood has been out of ideas for awhile
Sat Jul 16, 2016, 04:51 PM
Jul 2016

The blood in Hollywood is old. Most directors and writers have lost their touch. The executives and studio big wigs are dinosaurs who only care about profit margins instead of quality. Too many studios are releasing movies based on statistics and demographics. The movies have become too expensive and being turned out too quickly. The artform of acting and directing is being lost. And we rarely get any quality dialogue today.

This Ghostbusters movie cost $145 million to make. That's ridiculous when the original only cost roughly $70 million (in today's money). I'm not sure why movies cost so much to make these days. Why are big budgets so frequently green-lit. It seems as these budgets swell, the quality declines.

As for Disney, they are an exception, that company lives in a world of its own and they follow a very specific formula that has worked for them going back to the days of Walt himself when it comes to the animated stuff.

TexasBushwhacker

(20,044 posts)
6. They did- LOL
Tue Jul 19, 2016, 07:14 PM
Jul 2016

It was more of an exercise than anything. Gus Van Zant used the original script and pretty much copied it shot for shot. Vince Vaughn was Norman, Anne Heche was Marion Crane and Julieann Moore was her sister. It wasn't successful for 2 reasons. Obviously there was no element of surprise and frankly Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche don't have the acting chops of Perkins and Liegh.

Auggie

(31,067 posts)
3. Don't rely on the reviewer's opinion ...
Fri Jul 15, 2016, 07:48 PM
Jul 2016

see it for yourself. Though as I said in my OP I'm not surprised. Wiig and McCarthy have proved themselves to be competent comedians time and again. McKinnon and Jones are (pretty much) one-dimensional sketch artists yet to break from the banality of SNL. I wonder why Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler weren't in the cast? Or Emma Stone, Reese Witherspoon or Drew Barrymore?

ProudToBeBlueInRhody

(16,399 posts)
4. Meh, I'm very picky about what I see in theaters
Fri Jul 15, 2016, 07:53 PM
Jul 2016

I wasn't likely to go see this anyhow, I just found it interesting that the one thing for me in it's favor took the brunt of criticism here.

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