GHOSTBUSTERS

Haters, as we all know, gonna hate. So there was probably no way the new Ghostbusters was ever going to win over the trolling Internet fanboys convinced that director Paul Feig’s female-led reboot – a nuclear bomb aimed directly at their childhood memories – was the end of civilization as we’ve known it. What consequently saddens me is that the movie spends so much time sucking up to those guys. While watching Feig’s latest, it’s easy to forget about the film’s underwhelming, dare-I-say-dreadful trailers, as the work in full is frequently very funny. But it’s also exhausting, because hardly a minute passes in which you’re not reminded of the Ghostbusters legacy – Ivan Reitman’s 1984 original, sure, but also the tired “controversy” surrounding its new presentation. All told, this might be the most simultaneously apologetic and defensive Hollywood blockbuster I’ve ever seen.

Enacted by the delightful, gifted quartet of Michelle Blocker-Rosebrough, Melissa Anderson Clark, Sheri Olsen, and Erin Platt, The Marvelous Wonderettes is Countryside Community Theatre’s intentionally minimalist summertime offering after numerous seasons of grandly scaled, extravagantly cast Broadway hits. As it’s better to go small than go bust, I admire the organization’s decision to downsize. Yet if you know nothing about this undemanding musical, I urge you, in the interest of your time, to avoid the synopsis on its Wikipedia page, which details in 1,576 words what can be effectively distilled to 15: "Four young women sing ’50s songs at their prom, then ’60s songs at their reunion."

Music

John Paul White

Daytrotter

Wednesday, July 13, 8 p.m.

On July 13, independent singer/songwriter and four-time Grammy Award winner John Paul White performs a special concert at Davenport’s Daytrotter venue. Later this summer, on August 19, White will release his second solo album, Beulah, which features songs including “Make You Cry,” “I’ll Get Even,” and “Hate the Way You Love Me.” Just throwing those provocative-sounding titles out there in case you were somehow confusing John Paul with Pope John Paul.

Friday, July 1, 10:45 a.m.-ish: My latest quadruple-feature begins with The BFG, and the movie is a bit of a BFD, because it’s been nearly five years since Steven Spielberg directed anything a little kid might conceivably want to attend. (And even that 2011 release was The Adventures of Tintin, so, you know, it’s actually been more than five years.) But even though the crowd I’m with is barely deserving of the term “crowd” – it’s merely a couple-dozen tykes accompanied by taller chaperones – you can tell that this gentle, charming adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel is working for them, because they’re unusually quiet during Spielberg’s many moments of lovely stillness, and they really dig the fart jokes. And hoo-boy are there fart jokes.