Ghostbusters 2016 Parent's Guide

The original 1984 Ghostbusters is one of my favorite movies of all time. So I was pretty excited to hear that an all-female reboot was happening, and I knew that I would be there opening night. Since both of my kids (Nate, 16 and Kitty, 9) loved the original we went as a family.

Kitty isn’t easily freaked out. She loves action and adventure movies and counts Terminator 2 as one of her favorites. She’s seen the original Ghostbusters on multiple occasions – this new Ghostbusters was too scary for her. Even teenager Nate found it to be a bit anxiety-provoking. Here’s why:

-The ghosts are different. While most of the 1984 ghosts were relatively cartoony and seemed to delight in malicious mischief, the 2016 ghosts were scary and wanted to kill.
– Special effects have come a long way in 32 years. While the practical effects in the original were cool, they have not aged well. That’s not super scary for a kid in 2016. While the ghosts in the new movie were made to match the feel of the original, they were scarier just because they looked more “realistic”
-There were a lot of jump scares. They were pretty easy to see coming, so we were able to brace ourselves, but there were a lot.
-We saw it in 3D. It made some of the gags pretty cool, but being in a dark theater with 3D made it that much more intense.

This movie is rated PG-13, and I think that’s a pretty good guideline. it’s not gory and the horror is definitely tempered by humor -but it will scare younger kids and even sensitive older ones. It’s unlikely that your kid is going to be traumatized by the movie; Kitty didn’t have nightmares and is planning on being a Ghostbuster for Halloween, but it made for some intense moments in the theater. I think that viewing it at home in the day on a smaller screen once it comes to home video is going to be much easier for many kids.

Some other things to look out for:

-There is some swearing (including damn, shit, and bitches)
-There a few sly references to the internet controversy surrounding rebooting the franchise with women.
-There is a character that is terribly stupid. It’s pretty funny, and none of it is mean, but he is really, really over-the-top stupid.

My review? I liked it. I wanted to love it, but I liked it. It seems to rely heavily on the ad-libbing of the stars, which made a lot of the jokes one-liners that could have been in any movie. That made it feel a little disjointed to me. It lacked the charm of the original, and I think much of that had to do with the huge level of fan-service cameos and in-jokes. I loved all of the actors in the film, Kate McKinnon really stole the show as the super-quirky Holtzmann, and Melissa McCarthy proved once again that she’s a great action-comedy star. I wish the whole team had been scientists, or they at least hadn’t thrown the immensely talented Leslie Jones into the same role that Ernie Hudson filled as “blue-collar minority who joins the team for some reason”. Some of the fan service stuff was totally hokey and took me out of the film, but some of the gags were appreciated. I loved seeing a team of women Ghostbusters, and I was so excited that Kit got to see it, too – though I wished I would have waited to show her at home.