Review of Ghostbusters (1984) by Streebystation — 28 Jun 2016

Ah yes, Ghostbusters. One of the classics that came from the 1980’s, I’m sure it was a time considered by many to be a great decade. This movie has been seen by audiences and plenty of critics alike as one of the greatest comedies ever made. And, seeing as there is a new Ghostbusters movie coming out soon I feel it would be fitting if I looked at the two films that came before. Does it meet the expectations I hoped for, or am I going to have the unpopular bad opinion? Well, let’s go into detail.

The film centers around scientists of various degrees of credibility, Ray Stanz (Dan Akroyd) the person who is always energetic about what he does, Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) the logical one who doesn’t have much emotion and has his eyes always focused on science, and Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) the sarcastic one who’s not afraid to say what he thinks. All of them, after being kicked out of teaching in university decide to start a business centering around catching the paranormal and see what makes them tick. At least, that’s what I assume why they keep all of them in a secured container.

You also have Sigourney Weaver as Dana Barrett who requests the Ghostbusters help to discover the strange occurrences happening in the apartment building that she lives in. Little does anyone know about what events are about to unfold.

First thing I like to say is that the soundtrack is nice, the various songs that play throughout the entire movie I’m sure it hasn’t left the mind of some people currently reading this. It really is a thing of beauty to listen to. The special effects too, especially for the time look very good. It has aged quite a bit though, especially with the party scene with the monster what wrecks everything. I rarely had a feeling that he was actually there chasing Louis Tulley (Rick Moranis) at all.

Oh yeah! The characters, let’s talk about that part. The chemistry between our trio of scientists is pretty funny, Murray, Akroyd and Ramis certainly know how to work off each other and be able to provide comedy that made me chuckle when it happened. Not surprising, since both Akroyd and Ramis were also writers of the script as well. If I remember from research, Akroyd too worked on Saturday Night Live at the same time that Murray was in the cast. So I had no doubt that they could make a concept like this work very well. When Winston Zeddmore (Ernie Hudson) arrives on the scene later on, they waste no time in giving him time to develop and work with the other cast. Every character in this story, main and supporting alike, manage to make a story about capturing ghosts possible.

Even with all this, there are a few things holding me back from giving the film a very high score. For starters, some of the science in this thing isn’t exactly logical. I’m not talking about that ghosts can never happen; I have no issue. It’s things like how can something like a proton pack actually scientifically work? I don’t think protons work like that! There are also a few minor scientific licenses they used. 300cc of what again? That would kill someone, not put them to sleep! I guess Dana's right, Venkman's not a scientist!

This is going to sound odd, but I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t laugh as often as I should have. They clearly written a lot of stuff that should have made me visibly laugh, but all I did was chuckle every now and then at most of them. I only laughed out loud once, and that was when they used the packs for the first time on a maid’s cleaning cart. Her reaction after the blasts stopped was golden! I wished I could have laughed more often, but I suppose that’s my problem, not the film in that regard.

I really don’t want to upset anyone who thinks of the film as a masterpiece, but it’s really a good film. I promise that! I just think that it isn’t perfect. That is all.