Several months after it was released, the Media Research Center can’t stop dancing on the grave of the all-female reboot of “Ghostbusters.”
Despite making $180 million worldwide at the box office and having a 73% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes, the MRC — led by right-wing movie critic Christian Toto, who blogs at NewsBusters — pronounced it a flop because it didn’t make back all its filmmaking and marketing expenses and because it was too feminist for the right-wing MRC boys, with Toto insisting in his ideologically motivated review that it relied on “victimization storylines ripped from today’s snowflake-encrusted headlines.”
Toto, apparently, isn’t done bashing the film. His Dec. 17 NewsBusters post takes a gratuitous shot at director Paul Feig: “Paul Feig can rock a finely tailored suit. He’s far less comfortable defending his Ghostbusters reboot.” He then whines that Feig is “insisting recasting an iconic male comedy with women isn’t political. Hogwash.”
Toto also sneers at Feig for noting that women were inspired by the movie and told him that If I’d had this movie when I was younger, I would have been an engineer or a scientist now”: “Really? Young women need a silly comedy about women busting ghosts to influence their careers? Was the film truly a scientific inspiration, or just a FX-laden lark? Young girls who never saw the new Ghostbusters simply couldn’t imagine a career in science?”
Toto backed off the bashing a bit by the end, conceding that Feig is a “big league talent” who “deserves credit for proving to Hollywood that women can lead major franchises without apology” — despite the fact the much of his post is devoted to complaining that Feig isn’t apologizing for his “Ghostbusters” treatment. But he makes sure to conclude with a parting shot: “He’s still not seeing the wreckage that is the Ghostbusters reboot clearly.”
Actually, it appears that Toto is the one who’s not seeing things clearly, so blinded by his Breitbart-inspired right-wing ideology that he’s unable to keep from injecting in his movie reviews.