Quote Originally Posted by Psychotic View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Shorty View Post
I think that calling it cringe-worthy and unfunny is even a stretch. How much of the script have we seen, really? A minute and a half of talk time? Is that enough to judge how funny a movie is or is not? I think that if you were in a theater for a preview and saw Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd pull that scene where Melissa McCarthy catches Kate McKinnon behind the shelf and she goes, "Is it the hat? Is the hat too much?" that it would be hilarious and that fans would love it. If you really and truly don't think that's funny, that's your prerogative and of course you are entitled for it, but that was an objectively funny scene. And if someone chooses to not like it because it doesn't have their favorite dudes saying the lines, well, that is problematic.

I do firmly believe that this film would be embraced open-armed if there were funny men in the roles in place of the funny women who are currently cast. I say that because we've seen mediocre garbage like Horrible Bosses or Dinner for Schmucks that is received as being fairly funny, but if women were cast in place of those roles, I believe that they would receive much lower ratings. Instead they are tolerated and even celebrated as being funny because of the men who star in them, even though the scripts and jokes are not that good, whereas films that star funny women like this are shredded apart if they don't have 10/10 five-star jokes across the board.

The fact is that the actresses, the director, the entire crew took a gamble on this film and making these changes, and I think that it's being criticized much worse than it needs to be. It doesn't look atrocious or cringe-worthy to me. It doesn't look like the best movie of 2016, but does look fine.

I understand that a lot of this resistance is riding on childhood expectations being messed with, but within the realm of encouraging an open mind, if you like the actresses and think seeing a squad of funny ladies hunt down ghosts to save New York sounds like a good time, then I would encourage you to see it. If you compare it to the good time Murray and Akroyd had decades in the past, then you'll have a bad time of it.
I would agree that the hat line was the best in the trailer and I wouldn't call it unfunny or cringeworthy, but to use the Murray/Akroyd example it wouldn't have made my top 10 lines in the original either. We'll never know either way though.

Let us consider how much time that got in the trailer compared to the "AWW HELL NAW, THE DEVIL IS ALAYVVV!", "GET OUT OF MY FRIEND, GHOST!" and "THE POWAH OF PAIN COMPELS YOU!" sequence. It played very much on the overused angry black woman shouting animatedly cliché which has been used in dozens of other movies. I got the impression it was crowbarred in in an effort to tick a box and appeal to certain demographics, and it wasn't even a particularly good example of that type of humour to boot.

I've seen the trailers for those two movies and I've never watched them because they didn't look funny to me either. I said earlier in the thread that I don't find the overwhelming majority of modern Hollywood comedies to be funny and that I appreciate I'm the weird one for it. I'm not disagreeing that some people have their views distorted by gender, but I will always object if someone tells me my choices are either find this funny or be a sexist.
You are right about the power of pain scene; it was the weakest and most unfunny of the trailer. However, it seems to me that it was clearly showcased in the trailer as a dissected effort of a marketing team, which shows how poor a job they did, really, which is why I overall don't really like watching trailers in the first place. They are based on the vision of a marketing team, not the director of the film. As an example, the two different Suicide Squad trailers that we have out are outrageously different - one is somber, serious and dramatic, and the other makes it look like it's a ragtag bunch of villains tripping over each other in a comedy. One put me off entirely, another made me want to see it. I have very confused feelings about that movie, which is further proof as to why I don't think trailers are accurate reflections of films and why I don't necessarily like watching them. I watched this one about GB to see what all the fuss was about and came to the conclusion that it has been sufficiently overblown by the internet.

As for my first post, it wasn't necessarily a commentary on anyone specifically here on the forum, it was more speaking to the overall criticism of the film I have seen on the internet, which is indeed overwhelmingly misogynistic. My post also wasn't meant as a ransom to find it funny or you'll get labeled as a sexist, more to encourage reflection on whatever resistance someone might have to this film and hope that it isn't just because ladies star in it.