Earlier this week, the first trailer dropped for the new "Ghostbusters" reboot, starring Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, and Kristen Wiig. I already had extremely low expectations for this movie due to the main cast.
Melissa McCarthy can be a funny actress. Look no further than her role on "Gilmore Girls," or her role in the comedic masterpiece "Bridesmaids." Both of these roles came early in Melissa McCarthy's career and prove she can be funny, but since "Bridesmaids," McCarthy has been among the most unfunny actresses in Hollywood. It legitimately baffles my mind how she continues to land leading roles after every horrible movie she stars in, e.g. "Tammy" and "Identity Theft." A majority of her humor can be summed up as such: She's fat. Get it? It's funny. She completely lacks any comedic range.
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I'm lukewarm on Kate McKinnon as an actress. While she's had some funny "SNL" skits, I'm not sure if she's ready to jump into a huge movie, and especially a reboot of a classic like "Ghostbusters." I'm not optimistic that she'll deliver.
Kristen Wiig is a very funny actress, and I believe she'll be one of the lone bright spots in what I imagine will be a very unfunny and, most likely, boring movie.
Leslie Jones has never been funny to me. I remember watching her first "SNL" skit and thinking, "Wow, does she possess the ability to make people laugh?" Her humor seems to center around her being a large, black women (and usually a scary one). She was the worst part of the hilarious and criminally underrated movie "Top Five," and I can't see "Ghostbusters" redeeming her.
As you can see, I was not very excited for the movie before the trailer dropped, and the trailer did nothing to make me more excited. If you haven't seen it, I implore you to watch the trailer below before continuing:
After watching the trailer, I can say with certainty that this movie will be hot garbage. I didn't laugh once during the entire trailer. Every joke seemed to fall flat for me. I honestly don't believe there was one funny scene in the entire trailer.
Side note: Hollywood, stop trying to make puke gags happen. They're never going to happen.
My biggest issue in the trailer, by far, is the treatment of Leslie Jones's character. All three white characters are scientists of some nature, while Jones's character is a Metropolitan Transportation Authority employee. Now, I have no problem with MTA employees, that's a great career, but it's extremely problematic that the only main black character in the movie is also the only non-scientist. It reinforces the negative stereotype that black women cannot be scientists, while white women can be. Even in the original, the Ghostbusters were all scientists, which means the reboot went out of its way to make Leslie Jones less qualified than the others.
This is not my only issue with Jones in the trailer. Jones seems to be the token black sidekick in this movie, and her character's pitch to join the team is basically her saying, "Yous is smart and I can drive you around, massah." Then, in her "funny moment" in the trailer, she screams, "Hell nah, the devil is a liar!" before she smacks the ghost out of McCarthy. This was the worst moment of the trailer, as it was supposed to be the moment which elicited laughs, but instead, the stereotypically black jargon just made me groan.
I was dumbfounded, but not surprised, that a major studio would have one major black character who they reduce to the stereotype, as so evidently seen in the trailer. Jones defended her role by Tweeting that "regular people are the real heroes," and sharing a letter she received from an MTA worker who was touched by the trailer. But any sentiment she might have established quickly vanished when Jones later said, "If I'm the stereotype then so be it."
I understand it's insanely hard for a black person, especially a dark-skinned women, to get a starring role in a major movie. Saying that, I still question if the movie is worth the price of the admission ticket, especially when Jones is just a stereotypical black sidekick, whose blackness is used as a comedic plot device, which means she is not truly a character: her blackness is. This movie seems to enforce the role of the black sidekick, and not of the strong black female lead as it could've and should've.
A year after seeing great black female characters in "Chiraq," "Dope," and "Creed," among a plethora of others, it's disheartening that the first big role for a black woman in 2016 doesn't seem to follow in those film's footsteps. I suspected the new "Ghostbusters" would be horrible for a plethora of reasons before watching the trailer. After watching the trailer, my suspicions were confirmed, but I can truly say I didn't think a black caricature would be one of reasons I was trashing this film.
Could I be overreacting to the first trailer? Possibly. Could the movie do more with Jones's character than I think? It's possible, but I wont be holding my breath.
