Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters (1984)
Writers: Dan Akroyd, Harold Ramis
Cast: Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts, William Atherton, Ernie Hudson
Synopsis:
After having their research grants at Columbia University cancelled, scientists Peter Venkman (Murray), Ray Stanz (Akroyd) and Egon Spengler (Ramis) go into business for themselves selling paranormal investigations and elimination services, calling themselves Ghostbusters. They are hired by musician Dana Barret (Weaver), who experienced an unsettling paranormal encounter in her kitchen. As the investigation progresses, the Ghostbusters become busier and busier as New York seems to be exploding with paranormal activity. They soon discover that Dana's apartment building could be the source of all their troubles, as they find that it is a conduit for the return of the ancient Sumerian god of destruction, Gozer.
First Impressions:
In my previous review of The Goonies, I wrote about how that particular film was one of my childhood seminal movies. Ghostbusters is another one of those movies. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see this in theatres, though I was old enough, because my mother forbade me from watching it. Being raised in a Christian household, my Mom was super picky about the movies and shows that I watched. Because Ghostbusters involved things like spirituality and possession, she wasn't keen on me watching it. Fortunately, about a year later, during summer vacation, when the movie finally came out on home video, my brother and I managed to convince my grandparents to rent it for us when Mom and Dad were away for a few days. To eight-year-old me, popping that cassette into the VCR was like finding the Lost City of Gold. After hearing my friends talk about the movie for a year, I finally experienced it myself, and I was not disappointed. I loved the movie, even though I really didn't understand a lot of the jokes. All I knew was, people got slimed, and that was cool. Years later, the film has grown into one of my all-time favourites, and I've long considered it one of the best movies to come out of the 80s.
Story/Direction:
"Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say 'YES'!"
While nowadays, Ghostbusters' idea doesn't seem terribly unusual, it was a pretty out-there idea back in 1984. There really wasn't anything like it back then, and the concept of doing a comedy mixed with horror wasn't all that well used back in the day. There certainly weren't many that achieved the worldwide success that this film did. Watching the film again after not seeing it for several years, I was surprised at how well-paced it was, and the movie's 105-minute runtime just flew by. It's a good lesson in efficient storytelling. The first few scenes establish who the main characters are and what they're all about. We learn that Venkman is a bit of a skeevy womanizer, Stanz is an enthusiastic scientist and eager to please, and Spengler is probably somewhere on the spectrum. There's not much superfluous dialogue or excess story beat to gum up the works, and the story really just flows nicely.
At this point in time, Rietman was already well known for his comedic directing, and this movie shot him into stardom. He makes good use of montages to move the story along and doesn't waste the audience's time with unnecessary "world-building," which is an issue that many modern films are plagued by. Instead, Reitman keeps us focused on the group of heroes and on Dana's problem and rarely veers from that.
The dialogue is also well written, and this could easily have not been the case. Ghostbusters deals with subject matter that the average person would know little about, and it would have been easy for the dialogue to become nonsensical. To combat this, writer Akroyd and Ramis use Peter's station as a subpar scientist as a surrogate for the audience. Many of the film's funnier moments come from Stanz and Spengler, spouting some gobbledygook about some random paranormal event and then pausing to explain it all in English to Peter, who is just as confused as the audience.
Acting:
I'll be the first to admit, I'm not the biggest Bill Murray fan. In fact, I'm not a fan at all, and I think as a comedian, he just tries too hard. However, he was a major key to this film's success, and I have to admit that he was the perfect man to play Peter Venkman despite my dislike of him as an actor. Murray plays the character as such a skeeve, but we still end up liking him because he's got such charisma. His goofy nonchalance plays off the over-eager Stanz and the perennially serious Spengler so well that the result is movie gold.
Also, have to give William Atherton a shoutout as Walter Peck, the film's corporeal antagonist. I think this is the film that cemented Atherton's place as the character actor everybody loved to hate in the 80s. I'm not sure there's anybody in Hollywood that can pull off smug self-importance quite like Atherton. In this film, the funny part is that Peck is just doing his job, with a legitimate concern, and he's treated poorly by Venkman when he asks to see the Ghostbusters facility. That's the genius of the role, in my opinion, the character can be right on all accounts, yet everybody hates him. Top marks.
I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention Sigourney Weaver as the female lead. Weaver is a terrific actor, and it would be easy to say that she was relegated to playing the damsel in distress in this film. However, I really like what she did as Dana Barrett, particularly in her scenes with Venkman. It's almost as if the two of the movie are a comedy duo through most of the movie, with Dana playing the straight man to Peter's goofball. It works somehow, and Weaver has such a good dry wit that her responses to Venkman's antics elicited many a chuckle out of me.
Visuals:
The movie's visual effects are a bit of a mixed bag, which is often the case for movies made in the era. I think the ghost design and effects were done very well and look like they fit in with the rest of the movie. As the laser beams from the Ghostbuster's proton packs, some of the other effects looked less good. There's also a fair amount of stop motion animation in the film, which doesn't really work. Stop motion is a tricky thing to get right, especially when integrating it with a live-action film, but what's done in this film just looked janky. I think that maybe partly due to the high-def nature of TVs nowadays. Back in the 80s, because the resolution was less than ideal, filmmakers could get away with more because the audience couldn't see as clearly as they do now. While the visuals certainly date the film somewhat, they never really took me out of it.
Score/Music:
The music in this film is dominated primarily with contemporary (for the time) music hits, including the smash hit Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr. I remember that song was huge back in the day. It's still a toe-tapper nearly 40 years later (holy shit, I'm old). There are some other pop hits tossed in the film as well, but none of them had the film's theme song's longevity or popularity. All in all, I'd give the music a passing mark.
Action:
There's not really a ton of action in the movie, but there's a lot of really cool set pieces, including the trapping of a ghost in a fancy ballroom and, of course, the climax involving a 50-foot tall marshmallow man stomping his way through the street of New York City. It's not an action movie by any stretch of the imagination, but there's enough in there to keep the audience on the edge of their seats.
Final Verdict:
Before this viewing, Ghostbusters stood for me as one of the classic must-see movies of the 1980s, and I think it remains so. While some of the jokes maybe aren't as palatable to a modern audience, particularly many of Venkman's antics, I think there's still a lot here to like. Fans of Bill Murray should check this out, as should fans of horror comedies in general
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