Year of the Month
Ghostbusters: Answer the Call feels like a telemarketer is calling
After years of nothing I was extremely excited when Ghostbusters: Answer the Call was announced. I was hungry for a silly, spooky film like what they had given us in Ghostbusters. What I got was different. It was almost a spoof instead of a continuation of the series. It took the comedy aspect too far and at times managed to be offensive.
We’ve got Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig), an academic who used to be interested in the paranormal because she was haunted by her grandmother and no one believed her. Her estranged friend, Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy), never gave up on the research they had started together. The impression we get is that Erin gave up on her paranormal studies because it didn’t stop her from being ridiculed for what had happened in her childhood, it only expanded the mockery as she tried to be taken seriously as an academic.
Things start getting weird in New York (as they always do in a Ghostbusters film), and these ladies end up stumbling upon a plot to end the world. The Governor acknowledges everything going on behind closed doors, even bringing in federal agents to mitigate the problems, while publicly decrying the work the Ghostbusters are doing.
There are some parallels with the past movies. Scientists aren’t taken seriously when the end of the world is on the line, the Governor is mostly interested in how everything looks to the voters, and in the end, someone has to stand up and do what is right.
The comedy in this movie goes too far for me. While hungry for anything to indulge that nostalgia I was willing to overlook a lot, now, 8 years later and two successful Ghostbusters movies that were more the tone I was hoping for, I can honestly say this is cringe. I was excited that the original cast was behind it and willing to do cameos. Dan Aykroyd’s cameo as a cab driver knowledgeable in the supernatural was the closest to his original Ghostbusters character. Bill Murray played a myth-buster, and Ernie Hudson played a funeral director. Harold Ramis sadly passed but also cameoed in two of the three films. In Ghostbusters Answer the Call he was a statue in the opening sequence. In Ghostbusters Afterlife they AI generated a likeness of his image as a ghost1. All of the original cast has also been behind Ghostbusters Afterlife and Ghostbusters Frozen Empire reprising their original roles.
The secretary being played by a man instead of a woman was good and kept the parallel that had been in the original cast. Erin’s completely inappropriate questions turned the tables on some interviews that women have received, although in the case of Kevin (Chris Hemsworth) he didn’t seem aware that he should be offended by the questions. Erin is a walking lawsuit around Kevin and while I am proud of Abby for pointing that out, allowing Erin to continue the behavior is insulting to everyone. The interactions between Erin and Kevin are some of the most cringeworthy in the film.
Ultimately this movie didn’t stand the test of time that Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters: Afterlife have succeeded at. This movie is one of my sons’ favorites and is on in our house a lot. The baser humor appeals to a 7-year-old, and he doesn’t find it at all insulting to be sexually harassed. I give the movie 2 out of 5 stars for trying to be something it just wasn’t.
About the writer
Cori Domschot
Cori is a writer, wife, and mother to two adorable kiddos.
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Conversation
I wanted to like this. I wanted to support this. The sexist backlash – frontlash since it came before anyone saw the movie? – was hideous. But I didn’t like it much. Kristen Wiig has never done much for me, though the rest of the cast was pretty good. Bizarrely, I thought the best actor here was Chris Hemsworth. And search me if I could remember much about the plot. The energy was just wrong.
And yet I think taking this approach is more appealing that legacyquels.
I agree the backlash before it was out was terrible. And I really wanted to like it. The legacy style has worked better with the tone I was hoping for, but I understand the corner this can paint us into.
“It was almost a spoof instead of a continuation of the series.”
I think this gets at the weird, confused vibe here. “Female Ghostbusters” is a fine concept, the outrage around this was piss-brained crybabyism of the highest order, but half of this is “Ghostbusters made female,” in which various aspects of the original are just redone but distaff (most egregiously jamming the black Ghostbuster in half-assedly in the back half — zero reason to do this) and other parts are purposeful rebuttals that don’t fit. The friendship aspect of Bridesmaids is the crux of the film, Feig making it important that the Ghostbusters (and McCarthy and Wiig in particular, more Bridesmaids redux) are friends feels very weird here. And Feig has lost his fastball in general when it comes to comedic direction. There are good things here — the runner of “the mayor in Jaws” being a known reference to be avoided is very funny and McCarthy gets some great moments that feel like what Bill Murray gets up to in the original in terms of cockeyed reaction but are entirely her own spin, it’s the best possible update — but this really didn’t work well. Although I disagree on the subsequent movies, I’ll take a whiff like this over their worship.