Boo Who? GHOSTBUSTERS

Like the 1984 supernatural comedy Ghostbusters, the 2016 remake is a plodding effects-heavy silly spectacle strung along a rickety thin plot. The jokes aren’t particularly funny. The ghosts aren’t particularly scary. And the story isn’t compelling. The whole enterprise rests entirely on the charms of its comedian cast. In both cases, this allows for a certain eccentric personality that keeps it from being a total waste. The original had its sarcastic Bill Murray, technical Harold Ramis, eager Dan Aykroyd, and helpful Ernie Hudson banding together to start a small business as ghost catchers. Now there’s a reluctant Kristen Wiig, earnest Melissa McCarthy, loopy Kate McKinnon, and capable Leslie Jones putting together a ghost busting team. They want to prove their research isn’t bunk, and that they can do some good removing New York City’s pesky hauntings. Because the cast is likable and game, throwing themselves into the swirling effects work with some sense of commitment and chemistry, it’s not too bad.

The run up to the movie’s release was marred by sight-unseen sexist anger from guys who objected to women in the ghostbusting business, followed by an opposing contingent who felt the best way to combat that nonsensical rage was to claim seeing the movie to be a sort of feminist duty. (Hopefully all right-thinking people know women can be ghostbusters; and you don’t need to buy this particular movie ticket to prove you believe in gender equality, despite its undeniably productive symbolic value.) In retrospect, the movie itself is hardly worth the foofaraw. Watching it I was neither entertained nor annoyed. I was, in fact, the closest to no thoughts at all as possible. Technically a movie, a great deal of obvious cost and effort went into making it a shiny, amiable, blockbuster bauble. It’s not a good movie, but it’s certainly no worse than the original, sparks of inspiration duly served up in a bland container. There are good intentions and good will on the part of director Paul Feig, co-writing with his The Heat screenwriter Kate Dippold, beholden to the idea of what a Ghostbusters should be. It hits the same beats, invites in many of the same spirits, and plays it safe. There’s an overwhelming feeling of been there, done that, despite the refreshed surface details.

Tasked with reviving a long-dormant property important to Sony’s bottom line, Feig, who has steadily been accruing a good run of big screen comedy, is beholden to the dictates of big, bland studio product. He doesn’t have the freedom to be as loose and observationally character driven as his Bridesmaids or as sharply pointed a gender studies genre critique as his Spy. So it feels emptier than we know he was, at least in theory, capable of making it, like it’s a fresh take sloppily shoved into stale packaging. But at least he is allowed to give his cast enough room to make it their own. Wiig and McCarthy nicely underplay sweet old friends who reconnect over their love of the supernatural. McKinnon is a continual delight as a loose-limbed weirdo fawning over the ghostly happenings and her oddball tech. (Whether she’s dancing to DeBarge or licking her weapons, every cutaway to her is worth a smile.) And Jones makes the most out of an NYC history buff, good for pointing out a subway spirit is of one the earliest criminals to be electrocuted in the city. (“It took so much electricity they said, forget it, just shoot him.”) They wring some small laughs out of the dead air.

To the extent this Ghostbusters is a pleasure to watch it’s thanks to these four women, plus Chris Hemsworth as their incredibly dim hunky secretary so dumb he plugs his eyes when he hears a loud noise. (That’s the movie’s one smart commentary on gender roles in these kinds of movies, giving women the center stage while the token man is there to be stupid and objectified.) Otherwise the movie’s a slog through repetitive and flatly deployed hauntings at which the women show up, take care of business, and then leave deflated when the mayor’s office routinely decries them as fakes. Then there’s an endless CG climax with swirling ectoplasm and a snarling underwritten villain. It’s business as usual. Every scene is too short – no good build to the comic rhythms or scares’ staging, with the hammering editing stepping on most punchlines – and yet the whole movie is too long. There’s a push-pull between the new and old (several cameos from original cast members stop the action cold), the comedy and horror, the grinding predictable plot and the thwarted desire to turn into a loose hangout with funny people. It never resolves these tensions, leaving the movie off-balance and never wholly satisfying. The women are great. The movie is not. A more radical reimagining was in order.

Politics as Usual: THE CAMPAIGN

Though Warner Brothers is marketing The Campaign as a big dumb R-rated summer comedy, that’s a little deceptive. What they have here is a big smart R-rated summer comedy. It’s a film that goes after our current crazy campaign climate with a desire to make it seem even more ridiculous than it is. That’s no small task, but with Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, two men completely unafraid to look utterly buffoonish and deranged, this is a movie that starts heightened and claws its way up over the top, emerging very filthy and very funny in the process. This isn’t just some safe potshots at the way we in the United States watch our campaigns roll out, unravel and descend into mudslinging and trivial nastiness. Rather than growing apolitical, this film is deeply cynical and mad as hell about it.

The film starts with impeccably coiffed North Carolinian Democratic congressional candidate, Cam Brady (Ferrell), making a misguided phone call to what he assumed was his mistress’s voicemail. It’s a mistake that reveals his extramarital activities to the general public and delivers a wounding blow to his poll numbers. Seeing the distress from a now-troubled campaign, the billionaire Motch brothers (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow) decide to call up one of their billionaire buddies (Brian Cox) to see if his weirdo son would like to run against Brady on the Republican ticket. They agree to put up the campaign funds and keep the Super PACs flowing if the generally doltish, but well meaning, Marty Huggins (Galifianakis) gets in the race. He’s a man who speaks in a hilarious airy southern drawl, but hey, he has the appearance of malleability.

Writers Chris Henchy, Shawn Harwell, and Adam McKay are smart to make the film less about ideologies and more about greed. The billionaires funding the increasingly nasty campaign aren’t doing so out of deep devotion to any specific cause. They’re only throwing their weight around to get the best business deals from their political pawns. As for Brady and Huggins, they don’t seem to have much conviction beyond a general appreciation for the Constitution and Jesus. (One of the funniest scenes finds one of them failing spectacularly to recite the Lord’s Prayer extemporaneously.) The race grows personal, but not out of any general animosity. They went to school together; they may even agree on a great many of the issues. They’re running for the recognition and the power. The more they lash out at each other, the more scared they are. The campaign is hardly about the people. It’s all about access to the proverbial smoke-filled backrooms and the lengths people will go to stay there. Oh, and it’s funny, too. At best, the movie provokes the kind of cathartic laughter that fills the lungs and pulls at the sides of the face with an almost painful intensity.

Jay Roach lets the campaign play out in an escalating drumbeat countdown to Election Day. He’s the director behind the broad comedy of Austin Powers and Meet the Parents, but his most recent film was HBO’s Game Change, about John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and his unpredictable running mate Sarah Palin. The Campaign plays like the blatantly comedic flip side to that true joke. Exaggerating our current political climate, by turns vitriolic and blatantly nonsensical, has to be a hugely difficult prospect. What helps is the way this film lets us understand why the characters act so crazed. Brady’s slickness is nothing more than professional insincerity. Huggins’s unpreparedness is nothing more than a desire to please his father and the moneymen. They’re both terrified that they won’t get what they want. Even though both men, even behind closed doors, say that they want to do what’s best for their fellow citizens, it’s hard to see the help they claim to provide.

It’s all too easy to imagine a campaign actually drawing tenuous links between terrorism and facial hair or patriotism and choice of pet dog. The professional minds behind the campaigns (Jason Sudeikis and Dylan McDermott) aggressively push the candidates into blandly contradictory stances on whatever they feel will get their candidate the most votes. The Brady and Huggins families, wives and kids, are victims of relentless badgering from the public and from within the campaign itself. The election gets so ugly and personal that one debate is reduced to one man demanding an explanation for a story the other wrote in grade school. Much of this material hits sore nerves of our current political mood, like a feature-length Daily Show thought experiment. So committed to their roles, Farrell and Galifianakis bring a wild-eyed determination and loopy believability to their ridiculous characters. No one, not the candidates, not supporters, not even voters, ends up looking good in this satire.

Some of the comedic moments in the film are just crude or blatantly absurd and exaggerated. A surprising seduction, a punch to a very innocent face, a hunting “accident”, and a car crashing into an unexpected obstacle are all good examples of moments that jump confidently over the top. Not all of these land, but they’re a good break from the material that hits too close to home. The candidates prank each other in cruel or weird ways, badger each other on baseless grounds, slap at each other, embarrass each other, and strike back in ways that turn the political uncomfortably personal. Though occasionally too on-the-nose, The Campaign grinds forward, growing uglier behind plastic smiles and bright, cheerful cinematography. Only the ending, which splits the difference between cynical and hopeful, offers a safe, satisfying out to the relentlessness of selfish, childish politics. In real life, we can only hope for such hope.