The new Ghostbusters movie feels like a video game rushed to launch in need of a day one patch that will never come. This film wasn’t ready for prime time — it’s clear from the moment a half-assed title card appears on-screen, and only emphasized by several amateur edits and forced cameos. The theme song appears over and over, as if to assure viewers that they are, in fact, watching a Ghostbusters movie. The big irony here is that almost everything wrong with this film happened in the editing room, having little to do with the performances of the main cast.

The four actresses that make up the new all-female Ghostbusters team — Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones — play their parts to near perfection. Had they been in a better movie we might have genuine conversations about which Ghostbusters team is our favorite. Their sheer enthusiasm often transported me into their world, inspiring the same imagination I felt as a kid with the original 1984 cast. They’re having a lot of fun being Ghostbusters, and that fun is contagious. When you ask the question, “why have female Ghostbusters?” this cast is about as good of an answer as you can hope for. Continue reading Review: The women are not the problem in the new Ghostbusters →