Ghostbusters Is An Embarrassment For Hollywood

Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon,Chris Hemsworth

It isn’t just the abysmal lack of scriptural substance that rankles. It is the sheer wannabe-ness of a project that sucks from the word go.Whoever thought this pathetic apology of a plot would sustain Ghostbusters  through a third film deserves to be certified and institutionalize for hysterical optimism.

The original film and its sequel   came out a good 30 years ago. Director Ivan Reitmen  conveyed a charming sense of infantile fun as the ghost-busters played by Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd and  Bill Murray set off on a mission to rid the planet of evil spirits. Now the original trio is no more.We get some of the original actors from Ghostbustersin cameos in this film. But they don’t quite fit in.

Swooping centrestage  are three brassy tacky ladies whose foul-mouthed antics would have you reach for the barf bag, provided you can get to it faster than the next unsavoury gag that jumps at you.The trio of female ghostbustersis played by that gifted comedienne Melissa McCarthy who plays it cool to the point of exasperating coarseness, Kristen Wiig who plays it straight to offset McCarthy’s goofy doings, and Kate McKinnon who behaves as though she has just been accidentally electrocuted in an ill-tempered washing machine. They are joined by a Black American recruit who , we gather, works on a metro station where she has just seen …you guessed it… a ghost.

Add to this an asshole of a freak who wants to destroy the world , and you have a potentially entertaining brew. Alas, Ghostbusters squanders the spirit of satire in an orgy of extravagant asininity. Every successive episode struck as me as more stupid and bilgy that the previous. By the time the narrative creaked and huffed to its laughably apocalyptic climax(with FX  so jejune I’ve seen better apocalypse on Shaktimaan)  I was ready to jump out of the nearest exit.

We don’t. Stop that squishy spurt, please!