Red Letter Media Takes Down And Breaks Down The 'Ghostbusters' Reboot
It's kind of amazing that Mike Stoklasa's creation of RedLetterMedia and the character of Harry S. Plinkett has lasted so long after first finding viral fame for a seven-part takedown of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace back in 2009. But the internet is full of plenty of wackier things, and despite the fact that this character is supremely annoying to listen to, his video reviews do make plenty of valid points, even if they are combined with some really lame attempts at humor.
While Star Wars has become a prime target for Harry S. Plinkett, every now and then he turns his attention to a movie that garnered a lot of attention from passionate fans and viewers. The Ghostbusters reboot from 2016 (or Ghostbusters: Answer the Call as it's more officially titled) was certainly one of those movies, and even though it's been over a year since it was released and most of us have moved on, Harry S. Plinkett has a one-hour takedown and breakdown of the film directed by Paul Feig.
Watch the Red Letter Media Ghostbusters Review
First, let me just say that the humor in these reviews is almost unbearable. Plus, it fluctuates so drastically between sarcasm and making valid points about the movie that it can be hard to tell when the character of Harry S. Plinkett is saying something that's meant to be a joke, not to mention that those jokes again are usually pretty awful. But I digress.
One fair point made by the video is that Ghostbusters employs Kristen Wiig as one of our central characters, but for some reason they didn't hire her as a writer, despite being nominated for an Oscar for co-writing Paul Feig's hit comedy Bridesmaids with Annie Mumolo. But it's countered by the fact that tons of little jokes in this movie are nitpicked to death. Sure, each line of dialogue should be important to progressing the movie, but since Paul Feig made a different kind of improvised comedy than the original Ghostbusters, holding a microscope over every single joke doesn't seem entirely fair.
But perhaps the most valid point the review makes is that the new Ghostbusters would have benefited from existing in the same universe as the original franchise. Instead, by trying to create a new Ghostbusters universe, while still hitting the same story beats and paying endless tribute to the original, the movie is effectively trying to stand up on its own while tying handcuffing itself to a chair. We've already wrote extensively about the reasons Paul Feig and co-writer Katie Dippold gave for making this decision and how they could have still created a soft reboot of Ghostbusters while still satisfying their own desires, if you're interested in reading more.
There are many comparisons between the old Ghostbusters and the new Ghostbusters in this video, which is inevitable. Criticism of the new Ghostbusters movie should mostly be aimed at the movie by itself. But the problem is, as we just mentioned above, the reboot goes out of its way to pay fan service to the original through references, cameos, story beats and more, so it's almost impossible to keep the two separated. That's all the more reason to figure out how to link them in the future if a sequel ever gets made.
At one point, there's a throwaway line in this review where Harry S. Plinkett says Chris Hemsworth's character and his improvised lines during the job interview scene would be fine if this was a romantic comedy about women starting a business. Honestly, if the new Ghostbusters leaned more into the idea that this was a movie about women starting a business, that would have probably worked better. The original Ghostbusters is about three guys starting a business that just so happens to be capturing ghosts. Meanwhile, the new Ghostbusters is more about the science of learning to catch ghosts, even though when all is said and done, the way they deal with ghosts isn't by capturing them, but seemingly destroying them, which is another big problem in the movie when it goes into full-on blockbuster spectacle mode for the third act.
There's much more said about Ghostbusters in the full one-hour video, but much like the Ghostbusters reboot, it's bogged down with a lot of silly humor and references to the original Ghostbusters that inevitably get in the way of what the video is really trying to accomplish.