I'm gonna let it clear to you from the beginning: I'm not a Ghostbusters fan. I liked it, sure, I've seen it a couple of times, and it IS an important movie for the genre and all, but yeah, not a particular fan here. Maybe that's why I had so much trouble understanding why there was such a big deal with making a remake (it's a normal thing in the business, especially when we're talking about things and styles that are mainstreaming at the moment), and I couldn't believe the fandom for the rage against the all female plot.

But I'm here to discuss the film itself, not stupid internet flames, so lets go.

Overall, I must admit, the new Ghostbusters isn't that much impressive. But guess what? The original wasn't that good either, and I surely wasn't expecting greatness. Its premisse is basic, the characters are simple and so is the plot, but the flick keeps you in the room and entertains as much as it should. The action sequences are perfect and in the right amount for the viewer never to get bored and the soundtrack is used in perfect sync with the various moments. 

The humour, however, was quite out of my alley. It's not that I wasn't able to understand the jokes, it's just that I couldn't find most of them that much funny, or funny enough for me to laugh really hard. That aspect was a little disappointing, but totally compensated by Kate McKinnon's Jillian Holtzmann, who is by far the best character (and performance) of the film, even though she has little to no dialogue (non gun related, at least). The other girls are good, and we can see Hemsworth having the time of his life bringing life to Kevin.

It is, in fact, after all that was discussed and raged, a bit of a slap in the face how little questions of gender play a role in the film. More or less in the middle, we have a single joke, when a disturbed and sore Patty asks the crowd something like "Is it a gender thing or a race thing?". But even that message doesn't intend to slap a "look, we're ladies!" thing on the audience's face. Of course, we can't be naïve to the point of saying there's no gender discourse here, but the truth is the endgame of the film is gender neutral. We are talking about an all female ghostbuster team, but in here we could have had any person representing any gender. In here, what matters are the ghostbusters, not the female ghostbusters and, using this, the film becomes an overall wake up call to all the "male by default" policy we see out there. Was the "all female cast" a marketing maneuver? Of course! But we seem to be forgetting that Hollywood is made more of money than dreams, and if the marketing maneuver happens to coincide with some social progress why not embrace just that?

So, sure, the new Ghostbusters is not brilliant, but it has a lot of the vibe that made the first one special, and it is definitly worth a shot.