Entertainment
The Hated, Gender-Swapped Sci-Fi Reboot That’s Far Better Than You Think
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
What if the most hated sci-fi reboot of all time was a lot better than you remember? When Ghostbusters: Answer the Call came out in 2016, it was dragged by the internet for being a woke, phoned-in reboot of the most popular sci-fi comedy in Hollywood history. But the film has aged better than the Ghostbusters franchise as a whole, and you can give it a second chance by streaming (or maybe that should be cross-the-streaming) this film on Hulu.
The premise of Ghostbusters: Answer the Call is that ghosts are real, and two brainy paranormal investigators set out to capture and study them. They team up with a enthusiastic engineer and a savvy subway worker to form the Ghostbusters, who protect New York City from everything that goes bump in the night. But unless the team can defeat the biggest supernatural supervillain the world has ever known, millions of city residents will become ghosts of their former selves.
Leaders Of The Proton Pack
The cast of Ghostbusters: Answer the Call is full of veteran comedians, including Kristen Wiig (best known for Bridesmaids, another Kevin Feige movie) as a professor who decides to bust ghosts when she doesn’t get tenure at Columbia University. Melissa McCarthy (best known for The Heat) is great as her kooky friend who never stopped believing in the paranormal, while Kate McKinnon (best known outside this movie for Barbie) dazzles as a mad scientist/engineer who understands tech but doesn’t understand people. Rounding out our core group is Leslie Jones (best known for Coming 2 America) as a subway worker who keeps this band of eccentric eggheads grounded.
Beyond the core cast, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call has a supporting cast full of excellent character actors. This includes Ed Begley Jr. (best known for A Mighty Wind) as the historian who helps kick our plot into high gear, and Charles Dance (best known for Gosford Park), who is icy perfection as a grumpy dean.
The original Ghostbusters actors make cameos as different characters. It is surprisingly Chris Hemsworth (best known for Thor: Ragnarok) who really steals the show as a ditzy secretary, one just as funny as he is completely airheaded.
From Critical Hit To Box Office Bomb
When Ghostbusters: Answer the Call hit the silver scream (er, screen), it earned $229 million against a budget of $144 million. That may seem like a decent profit, but the high costs of marketing transformed this into an unexpected disappointment for Sony, something inadvertently confirmed by director Paul Feige. Previously, he told Vulture that “a movie like this needs to at least get to like $500 million worldwide, and that’s probably low;” considering how far below that mark this movie fell, it’s fair to say this was a major box office bomb.
Despite all the fan furor, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call generally impressed the critics when it escaped containment and hit theaters. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a rating of 74 percent, with critics praising the movie’s cast of eerily talented performers. While they acknowledged that it didn’t reach the staggering heights of the original Ghostbusters movie, critics also lauded the film for being a fun, stylish adventure that stands on its own, thanks to a bonkers original plot rather than a lame retread of what came before.
Of course, critical attention doesn’t tell the whole story here, and Ghostbusters: Answer the Call was dragged by large swathes of the fandom. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a far lower 49 percent rating from general audiences, and YouTube was filled with one video after another of fans angrily tearing this movie apart. Some complained that the movie was “woke” because it femme-swapped our proton-packing heroes, while others declared that the reboot was a poor copy of the original Ghostbusters formula with none of the original film’s heart or irreverent energy.
Why Ghostbusters: Answer The Call Is Better Than You Remember
Now, to answer the question you’ve been shouting at your screen for about five minutes: why the heck am I recommending that you watch Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, a box office bomb so hated by fans that Sony had to give up and reboot the franchise for the second time a few years later? First, it’s an open secret that most of those screaming guys on YouTube were exaggerating this movie’s flaws, taking advantage of a digital ecosystem that rewards them for making (and keeping) nerds insanely angry. In reality, professional critics were correct when they declared this a funny movie that simply fell short of the original Ghostbusters.
Second, here’s a hard pill to swallow: nothing has ever been as funny as the original Ghostbusters, and nothing ever will be. While it has its charms, the sequel Ghostbusters II isn’t nearly as good as the original, nor are the reboot films Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which changed the tone of the franchise altogether (more on this in a moment). The sad, simple truth is that the first Ghostbusters was a movie that managed to capture creative lightning in a bottle; we’re not ever getting such a movie again, which is why we should just enjoy Answer the Call for its own merits.
Third, while the newer Ghostbusters films are a lot of fun, they are bogged down by Sony’s inexplicable decision to change the tone, transforming the franchise originally built on silly, cynical comedy hijinks into some Spielbergian family adventure film. That can be affecting at times, like when we watch the ghost of Egon Spengler develop a relationship with his granddaughter. But to be blunt, every moment of Afterlife or Frozen Empire that focuses on nostalgia bait or family bonding is a moment that doesn’t focus on what Ghostbusters used to do best: making us laugh.
It’s obviously not perfect, but Ghostbusters: Answer the Call at least spends almost all of its runtime focusing on comedy. The actors are all comic legends in their own right, and despite what the haters say, most of the punchlines really land. I’m a lifelong fan of the franchise, but if I want to actually crack up laughing at real jokes rather than endure nonstop nostalgia bait, I’m going to rewatch Answer the Call rather than Afterlife, a movie more concerned with MCU-style worldbuilding than actual jokes.
Will you agree that Ghostbusters: Answer the Call is far better than you remember, or would you rather put mood slime in your toaster than rewatch this controversial film? You won’t know until you grab your remote (the next best thing to an unlicensed nuclear accelerator) and stream it for yourself on Hulu. Afterward, you may never look at ghosts, Chris Hemsworth, or Chinese food the same way ever again!
