GHOSTBUSTERS

Erin Gilbert is a professor at Columbia University who, despite a neurotic character and a lack of following from her students, is about to make an important leap within the academic environment. An ascent stopped just at the best moment by the reappearance online of a book that she herself had written several years earlier with a friend and colleague, Abby Yates, and in which the two scholars asserted the existence of ghosts and paranormal phenomena. Once fired by her employer, Erin decides to return to Abby, also long marginalized from the university world for her ideas and unconventional methods, with whom she takes the decision to put their old theories into practice and form a team of ghostbusters, completed by the eccentric engineer Jillian Holtzmann and the metro ticket seller Patty Tolan. Accompanied by a handsome and stupid secretary, the four women embark on an adventure that brings great gains and popularity, but also a huge responsibility as they will have to protect New York from a giant threat. The operation of remake or reboot is always something rather delicate and difficult to achieve as, most of the time, one goes to touch and revisit films that have represented not only milestones in the history of cinema, but also true cults for one or more generations of young cinephiles who with those titles dreamed and approached the big screen for the first time, demonstrating the importance of the emotional and sentimental sphere that hovers around the seventh art. Given these premises, it seems rather understandable the wasp's nest of controversies and bad moods that have accompanied the production process of "Ghostbusters", reboot of the 1984 film of the same name directed by Ivan Reitman and become a must for all those who, like the writer, are approaching thirty. To direct this new version of the 80s cult is Paul Feig, fresh from the modest success of the comedy "Spy", who makes a fun film, overall enjoyable and capable of not disappointing the most enthusiastic fans, despite the fact that the comparison with the original model is pitiless and, in many aspects, unfeasible. Feig, as mentioned, is an author who comes from the genre of comedy and this allows him to give his ghostbusters a decidedly different spirit from those of Reitman. The female protagonists of this film, in fact, are clumsy, awkward and their ways of doing things give life to dialogues with a high comic rate that sometimes lead to the absurd. The witty dialogues, however, do not represent the only source of laughter as they are followed by grotesque action sequences such as those in which Erin and her companions handle the uncomfortable weapons they have built, the accidental birth of the logo by the hand of a street artist and, finally, the gags that see Chris Hemsworth very self-ironic and perfect in a role made to measure for him. Much of the credit for this successful container of fun, then, must be attributed to the choice of a cast composed of actresses established in the genre, including Melissa McCarthy (who has already worked with Feig in the aforementioned "Spy"), Kristen Wiig, as well as the surprises Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon, in the roles of strongly caricatured characters. So far it would seem that we are talking about a perfect and flawless film. It would seem, indeed. The conditional has never been so obligatory as in this case because with the passage of minutes the story loses the initial balance and verve and exaggeration becomes the keyword of this "Ghostbusters", as demonstrated by the sketches that in the long run become cloying and repetitive and an evident rowdy vein especially in a confusing and unimpactful ending; just think, in this sense, of the hand-to-hand combat, with so much slow motion, with some ghosts and the role of the secretary who suddenly becomes central to the narrative purposes. In short, it is in the second half that the film comes out a bit with broken bones and spoils what was good done before. Despite this, in conclusion, "Ghostbusters" can be classified as a pleasant summer movie without pretensions and to be taken for what it is, without venturing into comparisons with the past and to be lived with the idea of spending an hour and forty minutes of carefreeness. More than sufficient judgment.