It’s now the ladies turn for a remake three decades in the making. In “Ghostbusters”, the newest comedy from director Paul Feig, Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) and Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) are a pair of unheralded authors who write a book proving that ghosts are real. A few years later, Gilbert lands a prestigious teaching position at Columbia University, but her book resurfaces and she is laughed out of academia. Giblbert is given a second chance when ghosts invade Manhattan, leading Gilbert to reunite with Yates, and team up with a nuclear engineer, Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon), as well as a subway worker, Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones), to save the world from a mysterious evil and powerful demon known as Rowan (Neil Casey) who can exercise control over human forms. The new Ghostbusters are depended upon to save the day and rid the world of this new benevolent force, while fighting a stream of new and familiar ghosts. “Ghostbusters” is rated PG-13 for supernatural action and crude humor.

Ghostbusters” is a movie that has been getting a lot of negative press since the original trailer debuted, and while I don’t believe the movie deserves all of this hatred, after seeing it, I can say that it does deserve most of it. This is a script that tries completely too hard. Too hard to be funny, too hard to exist in the same universe as the original, despite trying to branch itself away from the 1984 original movie. Too hard to offer room service to fans of that original movie, while trying to open its arms to the youngest generation of new Ghostbusters fans. For a majority of the 110 minute run time, the movie often stumbles to find anything that justifies its very existence. Two things that this movie does manage to do better than the original, is develop the backstory friendship of the two main protagonists and offer some training sequences for some of the new and improved weapons crafted by McKinnon’s character. The new weapons really up the ante for the technological advances that science as a whole has improved on. I won’t spoil anything, but a dirt devil vacuum gone maniacal is among my very favorite. What’s great is that the movie shows the ladies trying and failing with these weapons on more than one occasion. This is something that was never present in the original movie, and really fills in the creative gaps of normal everyday people using mass destructive weapons with ease.

The character chemistry between the four ladies is there, at least for as much as it can be for this flawed script that they have to work with. For McKinnon and Jones, they are basically given the bare minimum of character. Jones is the same loud speaking woman she plays on every Saturday Night Live skit. Seriously, no differences here. If you can look past the racially interesting decision to make her character the only one who doesn’t have a degree, then you should be fine with her repetition in yelling. As for McKinnon, she is told to give one word answers and silly facial reactions to the camera for the first two acts of the movie. Considering I felt Kate would steal the show here, this is a huge disappointment that she is used for nothing more than another weirdo in the movie’s wide guest list of it. None of this is of course these four ladies faults, as this movie wouldn’t be good with the four greatest casting decisions. A lot of that is a focus on slapstick humor that just doesn’t fit the creative mold for this franchise. These are four comedians without a straight woman between them. In the original, Murray was the comedy and the other three served as his straight men. With four comedians biding for laughs, there’s very little down time to breathe and develop the script. The Ad-lib comedy goes on for what feels like decades, and there were a couple of times in the movie where I even forgot what movie I was watching because it floats away from the story repeatedly.

The material itself is another story as well, with many jokes falling flat. I laughed a total of three times in the movie, and those were more at the very ridiculousness of the logic in the movie. I get that this is Ghostbusters, but how do three broke, out of work women afford technology for weapons of this magnitude? How does Melissa McCarthy break her neck when she is possessed, but then OK when she returns back to normal? How are ghosts not able to break through doors? Is it the “Signs” theory? Who cares though because hating this movie makes you a male pig, so we all better enjoy it. Believe me, the fact that four women were the stars of this movie mattered about as much to me as the wind patterns in “Twister”. This is just a horribly made production on most aspects, and I totally missed the boat on the people in my theater who thought this was a laugh riot.

The tone was the biggest thing that worried me from the trailers, and my suspicions were correct. This movie looks and feels like “Disney’s The Haunted Mansion” meets “Goosebumps”. There isn’t any kind of suspense or adversity for these characters because the movie would rather give you big, colorful apparitions that wouldn’t scare any child. Part of that original charm to me was how the movie legitimately frightened me during some scenes, but there’s simply nothing like that here. If you can make it past laughing at the designs and presentations of some of these ghosts, then you will surely be stuck at how little of personality they have when compared to Slimer or Stay Puft.

One thing that still perplexes me is the decision to make this a reboot, instead of a sequel. Don’t get me wrong, this movie should never exist in the first place, but a sequel would’ve made a little more sense with how the script is presented. First of all, the movie makes it clear that this is a world where Ghostbusters never existed, so we’re wiping clean everything from the previous films. I’m fine with that, but then why are there so many references to said movies? Paul Feig wants to build a voice of his own for his four female heroines but makes the decision to give the audience so many winks and nods to the original that you can’t help but compare the two. If this wasn’t enough, there are cameos from stars of the previous movies. I won’t spoil what they do, but none of them really justify their existence. When you see this movie, see if you can picture the movie going on fine without their existence. I guarantee you can. As I said in my review for “Zoolander 2” this year when it became a cameo-fest just for the sake of it, cameos have to mean something. They have to leave a lasting impression not only on the audience, but on the script itself. It was certainly great to see these guys, but if this is the best that Feig can do to fit them into the script, then I would’ve been fine keeping them out all together.

Overall, Feig’s “Ghostbusters” isn’t among the worst films that I have seen of the year, but it won’t be making any future re-watches in my house. It’s dull, overworked, and most importantly not funny. Without the ghost of the original classic, this movie might’ve been able to find its own voice. As it stands, “Ghostbusters” is haunted by its own inner creative demons.

5/10