Do you ever get the impression that our endless identity-politics culture wars have less to do with the liberation of their ostensible beneficiaries than with the further career advancement of a small number of individuals whose careers were already doing pretty well?
For example, consider the hoopla over how it’s your social duty to attend the big-budget remake of the 1984 hit Ghostbusters because the well-worn roles are filled this time by actresses.
And yet the writer-director who finally got the privilege to bring back to the screen this prized boy toy franchise after 27 years is…a man. In fact, he’s the King of Women’s Comedy, Paul Feig, previously director of Bridesmaids, The Heat, and Spy.
Yet Feig is not exactly the second coming of George Cukor, the old-time gay filmmaker with a genius touch at directing women.
Instead, Feig is a regular guy. In fact, he might be perhaps the single most demographically average creative decision maker in the entertainment industry: middle-aged, straight, white, half-Jewish and half-gentile, male, and connected.
COMMENTS AT STEVE SAILER:
* Your review pretty much nails it. The whole story is built around 3 men learning to leave their childishness in the past while maturing and honing aspects of that boyishness for the good of themselves and the utility of society. The audience goes along much further with the guys at the end, beyond merely responding to the jokes, because they are invested in rooting for three characters who start the movie off aimless, drunk, with a stupid idea (scam in the eyes of Murray’s character) who actually put their “lives” on the line for the good of others to clean up a mess they made. In summary, they learn how to engage and be engaged by the “adult” world. That makes them comedic heroes who are some combination of clever, cunning and charming.
As for your idea of the movie which should have been, it seems we are on a similar page. They should’ve continued the story on the premise that the first one happened 32 years ago and that has been a historical fact in the movie world. As for the cast, I would’ve hired Rose Byrne or Cameron Diaz as the lead filling a spectral-biologist/anthropologist role; McCarthy a paranormal-rights lawyer or activist; McKinnon in the role not played by Diaz/Byrne; Wiig as a neophyte recruit in the public work Ghost Corp of New York and Leslie Jones could’ve played the grizzled gov’t job vet and boss to Wiig.
I’d have had cameos for the original cast: the Ramis statute (as in the movie is fine); Ernie Hudson could’ve been teaching Paranormal 101/absentee professor; Bill Murray would be the failed ex-mayor of New York; and Dan Akroyd could’ve been jailed indefinitely in a Guantanamo Bay situation for procuring all that nuclear material and being scapegoated for it.
The plot would be something around the fact that living-dead relations are at a equilibrium and most of the remaining ghosts are harmless annoyances at worst. But there is some malicious ghoul lurking out there harming ghost/man alike which has caught the attention of the biologist character. When she goes public with her concerns all hell breaks loose (literally and figuratively) and the 5 characters are brought together to figure out how to cooperate to solve the problem while navigating the bureaucratic bloat and general malaise and factionalism of the public.
….there are lots of ways to take this that wouldn’t have been as lazy and uninspired as Paul Feig.
* Women have a hard time distinguishing between “this I like and agree with” and “this is funny”. When a woman laughs at your joke, it’s an indication that she likes you, not an involuntary reaction to the quality of the joke.
* Steve hits a big reason: the Girlbusters aren’t funny because they are merely aping men instead of being women. And the drag show wears thin because they aren’t doing it over-the-top draggy, but rather serious-we-are-all-the-same.
Leftists want women and men to be exactly equal. But they aren’t. So a woman doing a joke the same way a man does it falls flat. This goes back to the what all successful comedians notice: one comedian’s joke won’t work in another’s because of their different personas. Chris Rock couldn’t do Jerry Seinfeld’s act and vice versa. etc.
Who you are and how you come across matters for humor. And sex is a big part of who you are and how you come across.
This is Hollywood, for crying out loud; casting is a big part of the industry, and even has certifications. They’ve long understood how important an individual is to a role. You’d think they’d notice that you can’t merely replace one comedic face with another and get the same result—especially when you have a sex change. But their religion gets in the way and all of a sudden Feminism trumps reality and their jobs.
Shakespeare had a lot of successful comedies with women characters because he allowed those women to be women—real females and how they really acted and their own female goals informed what they said and how they made jokes. The stupid lowly servant female didn’t use the same jokes as Falstaff, but she could be funny. Beatrice didn’t use Benedict’s humor for her sniping but still got laughs. etc.
One reason the remake of The Women failed (besides being, you know, a freakin’ remake) was that the makers of yesterday understood that women had female goals and desires, not male ones, and that made the characters real. The modern one was confused, and tried to give the women “grrl-power” motivations that, really, only men (and a few lesbians) have. Cukor, as a gay man who loved women as women, would have laughed off the nonsense the modern makers foistered on his characters.
The modern feminist woman is so divorced from her femininity and herself that she is less successful than the “oppressed” women of yesteryear. And Cukor would agree with me on that.
* The remake is just trash and is rapidly circling the drain and for good reason. The first one was bottled lightening, you can’t redo it.
Sailer is all too kind to the distinctly unfunny female cast. Really two morbidly obese women, one of whom can pass for a man. The other, a fat white gal is just plain not funny. Two others that are completely forgettable. The STEM girl is just creepy in that bad Hollywood way. Ramis was far better at it. He was more realistic than the female freakazoid.
And hey everyone is forgetting the target audience. Young men and older ones who saw the original. You aren’t going to get females to see this bilge.
Did Sony ever consider the movie demographics for even a second? There is none for for movies like this, this is why it bombed. Guys see four ugly women who aren’t funny performing roles meant for men. DOA.
BTW the cartoon series Ghostbusters lasted for some 600 episodes. I can’t think of another cartoon series that lasted that long. Why did it? The characters and stories. If Sony was really serious about a remake they could have done one based on one of the stories in the cartoon series with a new cast.
But that’s clearly beyond the reach of the limited talent in Hollywood.