The love writer-director Paul Feig (2015's "Spy") and co-scribe Kate Dippold (2013's "The Heat") have for the "Ghostbusters" brand—and, especially, the pop-cultural phenomenon that was 1984's runaway-hit original film—is splashed gloriously across every inch of their 2016 reboot. This new "Ghostbusters" neither replaces nor tarnishes anything that has come before (and even if it did, it wouldn't change a frame of the previous entries). Instead, it celebrates the franchise in the best way possible: by being a damn good movie in its own right, easily as jubilant and all-around fun as the revered—but let's be serious, imperfect—one that started it all.
A Columbia University physics professor hoping to receive tenure, Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) has long attempted to distance herself from her past life as a paranormal researcher. When her former partner and estranged best friend Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) lists on Amazon the book they once co-authored together, "Ghosts from Our Past: Both Figuratively and Literally," it is the first of two catalysts which reunite them. The other one, as it happens, is a strange encounter between a terrified Aldridge Mansion tour guide (Zach Wood) and the purported ghost of a murderous inhabitant from the 1800s. When Erin and Abby are sought out to investigate the mansion, their sighting of this apparition once and for all confirms their belief in, and years of work focused on, the supernatural.
See Dustin Putman, TheFilmFile.com. for full review
