It was okay. Not particularly funny, the action never really got going (IMO a few chances for action were sacrificed to give more time to attempts at comedy that never really get off the ground), and the characters don't really click.

I wanted to like this movie, because the first one was funny, remakes have been sucking so hard lately, and I like Melissa McCarthy and keep hoping they'll give her something to be other than pushy & crass. This, unfortunately, was more of the order of her prior team-up with Kristen Wiig, than with Bill Murray. I also don't get the fuss about casting and characters. I'm as racist and sexist (i.e. not inclined to kowtow to politically correct attitudes) as the next guy, but I don't see what's wrong with trying something different. They were not going to match the original Ghostbusters cast no matter what, so why not go a different route? But if you're going to be all PC & feminist, maybe try not to fail at those things, while at the same time, failing to give normal folks something to enjoy? The latest Mad Max was good not because or in spite of it's feminist issues, but because the feminist stuff dovetailed with normal people's tastes, and had stuff to which normal people could relate. Yeah, a tough, scarred woman was lashing out against a patriarchal figure, but he was a normal tyrant as well, not just a feminist perspective on a familiar authority figure. She was rescuing damsels in distress, which hits a chord with normal people.

This movie missed those things. First of all, it's climatic moment was a rip-off of Big Hero Six (absent the most touching and emotional aspect of the cartoon's scene), and second of all, was all about the feelings of the characters for one another. Not sexy feelings either, but friendship and bullshit. Peter, Ray, Egon & Winston didn't need to affirm their friendship, because they killed a bunch of monsters together, and that's more meaningful than any hug.

The original Ghostbusters were also more accessible in their motivations. The women seem to mostly be searching for academic credibility, which they ultimately accept they won't get, and settle for being funded under the table. The men were looking to make a living. Maybe Egon & Ray were interested in scientific recognition, but if Peter was, it would have been a means to an end. They worked out a service for which they could expect a market they could fill. Period. The new one raises the issues of costs and finance, but never addresses or resolves them. They somehow keep producing new gadgets and equipment without any indication of how they are getting paid until the very end. The male characters all had recognizably different personalities. Peter was self-interested and jaded, Ray was a paranormal science fan-boy, Egon was the archetypal absent-minded scientist, and Winston was just looking for a steady pay check. In the new one, Erin wants scientific respectability, and is excited when she sees a ghost and...? Abby is pretty much the same, but with coarser language. Holtzman is just whacky and likes making dangerous gadgets, and maybe makes Erin jealous of her friendship with Abby? Patty is lonely, and they take her in because she can get them a car (also, they were so hung up on the gimmick of original cast cameos that they undercut that reason - Unc shows up looking for his missing car, and Patty is blowing him off, even though they just made it clear that the GB are now flush with government money: I'm pretty sure more people were sympathetic towards Ernie Hudson's guy who's missing half his fleet, than his loudmouth niece who can afford a new firehouse HQ but won't reimburse her uncle for the car she borrowed and lost).

Another way this fails and the original didn't was they forgot the characterization rule. When you have a roughly equal same-sex cast of four characters, they have to match the Ninja Turtles or the Golden Girls, depending on that sex. Peter was the leader like Leonardo, Ray was the childlike one, like Michelangelo (or swap them, because Peter is the joker like Mike, and Ray is the most emotionally invested in the mission, like Leo). Egon was Donatello, and Winston was Raphael. But the new Ghostbusters are not the Golden Girls. Maybe Patty is Estelle Getty, but sometimes Holtzman is. There's no Rue McClanahan, and EVERY female foursome needs a member who is hot or slutty. That's the rule. Kate McKinnon is attractive, but they take pains to make her wear unflattering clothing and hairdos. Kristen Wiig's "thing" seems to be looking bland so female viewers don't hate her. Black women don't play the sex object in an otherwise white cast. They just don't. Black men are the oversexed ones, period (sex is also how they try to take down all the powerful black men in real life who managed to not get shot). And which one is Bea Arthur? Abby & Erin are pretty much the same person, except one is more pushy. Maybe Abby is Bea Arthur and Erin is Betty White? But Erin is sort of the lead, and Patty is really the one we laugh AT for what she says, rather than laugh with... It feels like they just said, "Go do your stuff, funny ladies!" without bothering to really write characters.

Also, that black character stuff I mentioned? If you're going to go PC in your all-female cast, maybe NOT make the lone black character be the non-scientist, muscle again, only without Winston's common sense? And the most pathetic and pointless of the four to boot? Another thing that feels like they were going for a specific feminist thing and failed was Chris Hemsworth playing a self-absorbed dimwit, who retains his job by virtue of his looks. I suppose that's SORT OF empowering in they way that true empowerment comes from turning around and dishing out injustice right back, but it just makes Erin look pathetic and stupid for putting up with it. There are plenty of useless bimbo women characters who the men can't resist hiring for their looks, but that's a measure of the male character's patheticness, not his power. Also, a bothersome secretary like Janine in '84 was something people could relate to, because lots of people have dealt with a person who is difficult in that way. Very few people can relate to dealing with an utter dolt possessed of uncanny beauty that suspends one's critical thinking. The original's example of making attraction-driven decisions was Peter's uncharacteristic attention to Dana's case. But that was played better, it gave Bill Murray chances to do what he does well, and still look something approaching competent, and it advanced the plot. Erin's crush on the receptionist does none of that.

The original movie didn't have a lot of fighting. They pointed their proton beams at ghosts and beamed them into the traps. They tracked the ghosts with detective work, and used their brains when confronted with difficulties. Because they were SCIENTISTS. They were variously doughy or scrawny, and wouldn't make any sense as action heroes. A quartet of sedentary women, two of whom are tiny and two of whom are, shall we say, not in a weight class suggesting physical prowess? are no more plausible as actions heroes, but the movie spends a lot of time coming up with new iterations on the classic Ghostbuster weapons that let them mimic combat moves. They use some of these weapons more like guns, there is a gauntlet thing that lets them punch ghosts and they have grenades. All so the actresses can pantomime combat fantasies in front of a green screen and sell more toys. But one of the two new highest standards of empowerment is to show women performing physical violence, regardless of whether or not it makes sense for her to do so, or succeed at it (the other standard is to have them act in debased ways, for some reason, and there's that, too).

Regarding said weapons, that's another oddity in this movie, namely the attention given to the hardware, with multiple scenes of tinkering and practicing. IIRC, the equipment were just McGuffins to explain how they were busting the ghosts. The extra fussing over hardware really doesn't add anything to the movie.

Finally, one thing I noticed when I saw the original in theaters at a 30th anniversary screening a couple of years ago, it was a conservative movie, sort of. The antagonists with agency (as the ghosts were not really plotting or being actively hostile) were liberal institutions, like government bureaucracies, and stuffy academics who treated them like climate change deniers. They were small businessmen who ran afoul of absurd overreach by an EPA bureaucrat, more concerned with his petty rules than dealing with the real problem. And where the scientific establishment and government both scoffed at the Ghostbusters, it was the clergyman who gave the mayor the thumbs up to support them at the end. Also, the ghost crisis had more religious overtones in the original, while the modern one treats it like some sort of scientific phenomena. And the origin of the paranormal activity...well, like the ending, it seems ripped off from Big Hero Six. Sumerian mythology seems like a better source, IMO, than a recent cartoon.

All in all, it wasn't a BAD movie, but not exactly a breakout comedy hit, and since they appear to have leaned into the feminist trends in current movies, we pretty much have to judge it a failure on that account as well. It's not that having chicks in the coveralls ruined the franchise, it's more that it failed to make a case for the current climate's PC demands for female representation. I don't think you need to avoid it, but I wouldn't make any special efforts to see it, either. At heart, this is a comedy film, starring comedians. They knew how to make those in the 80s, and they don't anymore (I'm looking at you, Griswold family vacation movies).