New ‘Ghostbusters’ haunted by casting errors

[Auggie]

Mick LaSalle / San Francisco Chronicle

When you have women as funny as Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy making movies, it’s smart to find ways to bring them together. And it was a good idea — or seemed like a good idea — to remake “Ghostbusters” as a vehicle for women like them. The original was a massive hit, after all, and there hasn’t been a “Ghostbusters” movie since 1989. But partly because of a weak script and partly from mistakes in casting, this new version collapses.

To put it bluntly, Wiig and McCarthy are funny, but Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones aren’t. McKinnon, in particular, is shockingly out of place, and she helps drag down the movie.

SNIP

McKinnon plays Jillian, the engineer of the group, and all she offers the movie is astonishingly unfunny and impenetrable shtick — wild facial expressions and gestures, out-of-context reactions and odd voices for no particular reason. The performance is a wild mix of vanity and self-consciousness. Half the time McKinnon looks uncomfortable on camera, and the other half she looks as if she should be.

This doesn’t mean that scenes between McCarthy, Wiig and McKinnon are one-third bad. No, they’re all bad, because a machine doesn’t work with a major part missing. There are moments here in which Wiig looks at McKinnon with a certain puzzlement and disdain, and you have to wonder if this is Erin looking at Jillian or just Wiig looking at another actress and thinking, “Just stop it, already.” Then add into the mix Jones, whose role as a transit worker turned ghostbuster is completely flat and unrealized, and you have the equivalent of Wiig and McCarthy trying to climb the mountain of comedy, each with a corpse tied around one leg.

FULL REVIEW: http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/New-Ghostbusters-haunted-by-casting-errors-8378505.php

I'll have to see the film, but I understand what he means about McKinnon from her work on SNL. Some of it is good but a lot falls flat.