It's not so much that they're "real people" but that they're
closer to "real people" than anything in the '16 movie. The world is full of Walter Pecks, self-important government douchebags who are petty and want to regulate everything to oblivion. Hell, thinking about it, I'm not even really sure what makes Walter Peck
that extreme. I can't think of anything he does or says that's out of line or breaks the "reality wall" into parody. He's there to make sure these "ghostbusters" aren't harming the environment and it becomes personal when one of them insults him and turns him away. He wants answers and these guys shut-down and he's not going to listen to anyone to get there even when the people who built the things and the guy from the power company all tell him this stuff can't simply be "shut off."
Tully is probably about the most paradous, extreme, character in the movie but even he more or less stays within the limits of keeping the movie "real."
The comment about the personal story-line between McCarthy and Wiig's characters is a valid one but it's a relationship that's sort of strained by the over-the-top comedy and acting and it's not even really that strong a connection since the two seem to work it out off-camera moments after they reconnect and begin making this "ghostbusting" job.... Which they didn't even really want to do to rid the city of ghosts but to capture one to prove they're real and get them some credibility back, particularly for Wiig who was just fired from her job at a prestigious school. (Was it at Columbia?)
But since
everything in that movie had to be a long, drawn-out, joke that was heavily improvised any "deeper" history between the two is lost. She comes in to chastise her about the book she wrote using Wiig's notes/research and then we get our first Won Ton Soup joke, then we get the queef joke, and then we get them running to the museum or whatever to see this ghost incident and we get, I think, I first joke where the heavy improvisation builds a contradiction but the scene needs to end now so we got to stop somehow.
They're leaving the research lab to go to the museum and Wiig is still hanging out by the queef-recording while McCarthy and McKinnon are by the door wanting to leave and McCarthy starts yelling for Wiig to get her ass into gear and come with them, Wiig is refusing because she doesn't want to get drug back into this paranormal business, but McCarthy wants her out of the room so she can lock the door, she doesn't even want her come with them to the museum. There's some fighting between them for a moment and McCarthy throws her hands up in frustration and says something like, "fine, the door will lock itself when you leave anyway!"
So what was the whole goddamn point of that fucking argument?!
She's yelling at her to leave the room so she can lock the door but the door locks by itself so there's no point in having to lock the door? Yeah, okay, maybe make sure the door
gets closed but that just seems like something that'd happen by itself or someone would do if they have to open the door to even get out.
And part of that argument was that McCarthy doesn't want Wiig around or to come with them, she just wanted her out of the room, then cut to all three of them at the museum and they're all friends and co-workers now and none of the history between Wiig and McCarthy is really touched on again.
But that's kind of the sign of a "good" parody, one where you know who/what they're making fun of, they're just turning the stereotypes up to an extreme.
The dean at McCarthy's college who is
he a pardoy of? What administrator of even the lowliest, dumbest, most unaccredited colleges behaves like this and is prone to misspellings. ..... (Okay, an obvious answer just popped into my head but play with me here.) He's not a joke of an type of person that's common, that we'd all know or have experiences with, he's just there for a joke. To be a joke. To give off jokes. To try and make one or two people out there laugh.
We've all seen and dealt with government assholes, or just plain assholes who put their own goals ahead of everyone elses and take things to petty extremes. Very, very, few of us dealt with people who sit there and rattle of a bunch of middle-finger gags to get us to leave the room.
Hemsworth is probably the closest thing the movie has to the "Louis Tully" level of parody as he more-or-less seems to stay in some lane of "realism" but even then he veers onto the shoulder but there's a rumble strip there that pulls him back into his lane. Some of the gags with him are just a bit out of step with a boundary of "reality" like the thing with covering his eyes to block out sound, or the thing with there being no lenses in his glasses. (I don't recall the reason behind it, I seem to think it was because of the glare they were causing his vision bothered him, so he took the lenses out but kept the frames. I don't recall if it's implied that he
needed the glasses to have useful vision (or to read) or if he just liked the way he looked with them on so any lenses that would've been in them would've been just regular pieces of glass/plastic like what are on the glasses you see on the walls of stores where you buy prescription glasses. (As opposed to reading glasses or getting the prescription filled where the "glass" has some distortion to it to make them useful to the wearer.)
The '16 movie was just extreme. Everything in it is extreme and a joke, and a running joke, and an endless joke. There's not one character in the movie who isn't in there to just be a gag and to deliver gags. And that much doesn't work very often.
Louis Tully stands out in the original because he's the one extreme they have. The one person taking these jokes right up to that "fourth wall" and poking it with a stick and threatening to pierce it. Everyone else is an extreme, a pardoy, an archetype but they're behavior is all within some form of reality because they're all playing it straight. Walter Peck may be an extreme of the government bureaucrat asshole but he's not running around, flailing his arms about, and doing a series of gags and comedy to force a laugh out of you at some point he's just being an extreme version of that asshole you once had to deal with. Or deal with once a month of your life as part of routine inspections to make sure you're keeping a series of logs in check to verify you're doing your job of cleaning things. (I've dealt with my Walter Pecks, I
deal with my Walter Pecks. It's annoying. Though the guy now is cool and, to be fair, he's not a government guy he's a private guy by the company to make sure we're a step ahead of the government for when they come in.)
In the '16 movie they're
all flailing their arms around trying to provoke a laugh at you and they're coming at that fourth-wall with a chainsaw. You're going to laugh goddamnit! Something in this is funny! LAUGH!!!! See! See! He thinks you cover your eyes to block out loud sounds! She hates this restaurant's won ton soup! The equipment is powerful and she's flying around like a balloon! See! See! She's constantly talking! CONSTANTLY! FUCKING! TALKING! HA HA! HA! A queef! Get it!! Get it!
The one laugh I got out of the movie? The ONE laugh? Was the most subtle, "original movie-like" gag where it may have been improvised (I dunno if this thing had anything resembling a script other than a series of pages that said "this scene needs to start here and end here, say things. Make jokes!") it's when they're in the theater, Patty is going around and she looks into a eerie looking room with some mannequins and prop junk in it and she says something like, "That's creepy, nope, not going in there!"
It was just something about the delivery and just the look of the room (which was "creepy-like", I guess) that made me laugh.
I didn't laugh at the won-ton soup jokes, the slime going in "every crack," Hemsworth mistaking his eyes for his ears, any of that stuff. Because it was all beating me on the head. I laughed at one joke that was quiet, subtle, and matched the look of the scene.
There's probably a couple others that were on that level that got a chuckle out of me, but all of the broad humor annoyed me.
There's lots of YouTube videos out there that explain the differences in the comedy and why it doesn't work (for all) in the '16 movie.
2:48 starts the segment that I think covers my thoughts best.
The Plinket Review is good at this stuff too, though long for some. Though it very much covers the problems with the movie.
32 minutes in or so they talk about how they filmed the scene, BTS interviews they literally say there's hour-long cuts of scenes where they they just sat and told jokes and McCarthy in an interview even
admitting that she was surprised there was enough stuff to put a movie together. At least watch a segment starting at around 37:25 that gives a good example of the movie going too far with jokes, and how one could have played out better.
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