Review of Ghostbusters (1984) by Patrick L — 04 Nov 2013

Ghostbusters (1984) Bottom Line: 5 stars out of 5. Love this movie. Always have, hopefully always will. Just watched it again recently after not seeing it for a year or two. Still love it. Perfect movie. Funny, interesting characters. Good sci-fi plot. Good music, good acting, good directing. Good effects.

Directed by: Ivan Reitman (Space Jam).

Written By: Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis.

Starring: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver, Ernie Hudson, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts.

Music: Elmer Bernstein.

Where to begin? Afterall, I love everything about this movie. The very first movie I bought on DVD was Superman: The Movie. Very quickly followed by Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II. Let's talk about the comedy.

Ghostbusters did something so well that many others have tried, and I don't think has been duplicated the same way as successfully. The blending of Science Fiction and comedy. A basic definition of sci-fi is "Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginative content such as futuristic settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, or paranormal abilities" (via Wikipedia). Most people only think of Ghostbusters as a comedy movie, but its sci-fi roots are almost as deep and indeed, a totally strait, non comedy version of Ghostbusters could be made using essentially the same premise. Its the blending of the two that make Ghostbusters such a great movie.

The very beginning of Ghostbusters used to legitimately scare me. Its a dark, spooky looking basement with all these books, and all this scary music, and then scary stuff happens. I'm pretty sure the first time I saw it, and probably audiences in the theaters thought they were in for some thrills. But then it cut to the genius of Bill Murray, performing an experiment on two college kids. I didn't truly understand that Bill Murray as Pete Vankman was flirting with the blonde female as a child, but I didn't know it was funny that it he was basically torturing the other kid.

So we have the blending of the science fiction with the comedy, and this continues throughout. As the guys go to the library to confront a ghost for the first time, they are teasing each other and using light slapstick. As I watched it again I laughed and giggled throughout. When Pete goes to Dana Barret's (Weaver) apartment and she opens the door and says, "Are you the keymaster?" and Pete says simply, "Not that I know of." I laughed heartily when Dana just slams the door.

Hello, if a woman asks you if you're the KeyMaster... you say, YES.

Anyway, I love the comedy element. But I love the Sci-Fi element as well. These guys running around with futuristic technology that they created and trapping ghosts. they even have a cool car!

Ecto 1.

Now, a critic might say its not "hard" science fiction because they don't really go into a lot of detail about how the technology works. But, I think within the context of one movie they kind of do. They show that they've been studying the paranormal for a long time, they have advanced degrees, they're scientists, and they work at a prestigious university (Columbia). Are there technology guides for Ghostbusters like there are for Star Trek? No, I don't think there are. Lots of vague-ish references to "particle accelerators" and "custom storage facilities", but not a whole lot of details given.

But how many movies, even hard science fiction movies, really go into the kind of detail? None. Novels maybe. But movies made for the general audience? No.

The Effects: I don't care what anyone says. For a movie made in 1984 on a $30 million budget (Star Wars cost $20 million in 1977) I think these effects look great and STILL hold up. If they attempted to touch up the effects now, yes I think they could make them look slightly better, but the reality is that what they were using effects for were relatively simple things like ghosts and the proton packs that they still look great.

Even the Stay Puft Marshmellow man, a much more complicated endeavor than laser beams, to me still looks pretty good. Made by a company called EEG, the effects for the marshmellow man and the movie as a whole look good I believe because of the mixture of real items, miniatures, computer effects and matte paintings. Mr. Stay Puft was created by a man in a suit and a mechanical head to get the articulation in the face they wanted. I love it, even now. Today they'd make it using some bullshit CGI, but this thing looks almost real, especially walking on the miniatures of the city. And they were able to really set it on fire so that it would burn like marshmellows because the stuntman was wearing flame protective gear on the inside.

Legacy: Ghostbusters spent 7 weeks at #1 at the box office. This is unheard of box office success. Only the biggest hits have feats like this. The Dark Knight spent 5 weeks at number 1. In its 9th week, it regained the top spot, and again in its 15th week. Adjusted for inflation the movie earned over $577,000,000 in the North American box office.

Bottom Line: Truly Awesome movie. 5 Stars out of 5. But everyone already knew that.