The new Ghostbusters movie seems to have the reverse Midas Touch. The movie’s video game tie-in looks like a room full of armless chimpanzees designed it by banging their heads against keyboards, and now the recently released Fall Out Boy and Missy Elliot theme song cover is assaulting our ears and making Ray Parker Jr. cry in a fetal position.
If you want proof of its awfulness without having to listen to the song and risk cochlear bleeding, at 2:37 Fall Out Boy’s lead singer can be heard repeatedly groaning out “bustin’ makes me feel so good.” Come on, Sony, I thought this was a family movie!
The song doesn’t even get its ghost busting facts straight. In Missy Elliot’s verse she explicitly states, “They come busting in, killing all the ghosts.” What? Ghostbusters don’t kill ghosts, they’re already dead, stupid. The Ghostbusters capture ghosts and store them in the containment unit underneath the firehouse! That is, unless Paul Feig completely screwed that detail up in his new movie.
And of course this song has been drawn into the wider sexism debate with a Gizmodo writer saying, “I’m so ready for assholes to start a new barrage of Ghostbusters-centric misogyny about this dumb song that I actually feel sort of defensive about it…”
Because in this day and age anything connected with a movie starring four women must be unquestionably protected and cherished and uncritically embraced. You know, because feminism or something.
