Ghostbusters is out, and so are the trolls. For militant fans of the original, knickers already twisted by the news it was to be rebooted with women, Sunday night’s warm reviews went down like a bag of itching powder. Sites were spammed with one-star notices. Smears spread that Sony had lined the pockets of the praisers. Wildly vile messages sent not just to cast and crew but enthusiastic critics, too. I just wish I were among them. The people who liked it, that is - though having the leisure and energy to protest in such a fashion also seems enviable. I’d been all up for voting with my ovaries. But actually seeing the film spoiled my ballot paper.
For me, the new Ghostbusters fails precisely where it ought to triumph: in convincingly depicting female friendship. That’s why Paul Feig’s previous films – most of them also featuring Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig – were so brilliant. They were funny and honest about the subject in a way not previously seen. Bridesmaids was terrific on the ties and rivalries of adult pals. The Heat was the first proper female buddy cop comedy: frank, combative and envelope-pushing. Spy was at its finest – and filthiest – when McCarthy forged a strange alliance with enemy Rose Byrne.
In Ghostbusters, our quartet’s femininity reads like imbecility. Their squabbles are playground daft. They cannot think of better things in life than soup and salad – literally: there is a scene in which they try. One of them won’t stop eating crisps and raiding the dressing-up box. Wiig develops a crush on the hunky yet dim receptionist that causes her to sweat and stutter and lech ineptly. Wiig is 42. She’s playing a quantum physicist. So do two of her co-stars, who are 32 and 45; the third, a subway supervisor, is 48.
But maybe such age-inappropriateness is inevitable. A family-friendly certificate kiboshes the kind of chat professional people of either gender in their 40s might actually engage in. I’m pleased if eight-year-old girls can embrace these women, 40 years their senior, as relatable role models. I just wish I could.
Autocracy-on-sea
There’s no two ways about it: “seaside tsar” would be one snazzy profession to put on your passport. Between 1997 and 2013 about 300 government tsars were appointed in the UK, before a report into their accountability and efficacy put the dampeners on recruitment. But they still pop up – last month Alan Sugar was hired as the Enterprise Tsar; on Monday, the British Hospitality Association called for the appointment of one to act as cheerleader for coastal resorts, before our fondness for cheap flights buries their attractions for ever beneath the waves.
Yet there remains something fundamentally fishy about the term – especially spelt that way. In the US, such appointees are known as czars – the first ones, 100 years ago, were charged with sorting out baseball fraud and milk delivery. Yet in the UK that letter swap inevitably recalls the days of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the Romanovs and the mestnichestvo, all that absolutism and autocracy. I know Skegness needs some better press, but surely it’d be best kept free of the taint of totalitarianism?
A force to be reckoned with
Excitement for Star Wars addicts as a first image of the new 14-acre themed attraction at Disneyland is released. Its landscaping seems to recall nothing so much as the outside space at Bluewater, the shopping centre in Kent – an outing to which would make a good, cheap stopgap til Disney’s alternative opens – where beautifully sculpted reliefs ring the upper mall, depicting medieval guild craftsmen. Quotations from Keats, Kipling and Shakespeare are writ large on the walls. There’s even space for the esoteric. Head for the first-floor ladies and above the door is carved an enigmatic line from Vita Sackville-West’s little-known epic, The Land: “Bearing familiar names, without a strong leaping of recognition.” Beat that, Yoda.
