[troutman]

Glowing, provocative, unexpected review by Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/...ticle30791253/

But in terms of the new Ghostbusters film itself, the premature protesters couldn’t be further off the mark. Paul Feig’s female-led reboot of the long-dormant franchise is thrilling, hilarious, lovingly crafted and the wild, colourful, giddy blockbuster this otherwise staid summer movie season so desperately needs.

Why so many (mostly male) fans of the original series decided to take up arms against this reboot in the first place is a mystery. Well, maybe not so much a mystery as just a dispiriting reminder that misogyny is alive and well on the Internet, where it can metastasize to gross extremes with zero justification. And for anyone eager to stand atop a pedestal to righteously proclaim that objections to a new Ghostbusters simply stem from a frustration with Hollywood exploiting adolescent nostalgia, well, where are all the virulent Internet campaigns against, say, the new Ninja Turtles series? Or the upcoming remake of Pete’s Dragon? Or the continued desecration of the Transformers franchise (if such a thing was ever in a state where it could actually be desecrated)?

No, it is easy to see what the Ghostbusters furor is really about: angry, bored, women-hating men expending otherwise untapped energy mining their own feelings of social inadequacy in a toxic bid for attention. If Sony and the Ivan Reitman brain trust had somehow convinced Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and the ghost of Harold Ramis to headline a new, straight-up Ghostbusters sequel, surely few of the Internet trolls would object. Just, you know, keep women out of the picture.

From the moment they all cram into a room together – this time above a Chinese restaurant, versus the original’s abandoned firehall – it’s comedic gold. The performers simply click, in much the same way Murray and company seemed so fully formed before Slimer even entered the picture.

But for all its minor faults, Ghostbusters is glorious fun – two hours of wit and wights, the ideal summer cinema that the rest of Hollywood just can’t seem to wrap its head around lately. If all that and the presence of leading women still rankles you, then the movies are better off for your absence.