Starring: Everybody that mattered in 1980s comedy
So, here we are. The final review for my first semester at
Seton Hill University. I’ve spent a long time staring at the blinking cursor on
this post, and I’m just not sure how to start. Why? Because Ghostbusters is my
favorite movie. It has been since I was six years old watching it on VHS for
the first time. My birthday parties were all GB themed through the sequel in
1989. The Real Ghostbusters (the animator series for you uninitiated) was a
staple of my Saturday Morning Cartoons viewing. In short, this review is going
to be extremely biased.
At its core, Ghostbusters is a comedy. It was written by two
alumni of the famous improve troupe, Second City, and starred three. It’s a
comedy with ghosts. It has a couple of slightly unnerving scenes (Dana getting
chair-napped is one), but it isn’t overtly scary, and it doesn’t really try to
be. It’s about three – then four – guys who find a way to fight and capture
ghosts just as the city is about to come under siege by an ancient evil. It’s
in the same vein, but much more ambitious than other comedies of the era that
featured SNL and Second City comedians. It was a comedy that aspired to be fun
on more than just the comedic level.
I credit the movie with introducing to horror. At five years
old, it told me, “hey, ghosts aren’t scary… it’s okay to talk about them, to
write about them… you should read more, Chad.” You have to slow it down and
play it backwards, but it does say that. In short, the movie, to me, was
magical. It spoke to me as a kid, and it still speaks to me as an adult. I
shared it with my children (who seem to like the second one better for some
reason) at the theater when they re-released it last year. To me, that was
bigger than any re-release of a Star Wars movie.
So, let’s look at what makes it special:
The opening scene at the New York Public Library. It’s an
iconic opening that showed more maturity than most comedies or horror movies at
the time. It really opens like a monster-of-the-week TV show, in which we’re
introduced to the “threat” before the protagonist.
The mythology. The creators worked diligently to create a
story around a real mythological figure in Gozer the Gozerian. Sprinkle in a
wacky marshmallow man and a fictional book about ghosts, and you have a recipe
for a respectable amount of research to put into a horror/comedy.
The stars. Obviously each character was brought to life by their
respective actors. Egon, perhaps the most underplayed character, was also the
richest. He was Sheldon Cooper before there was a Sheldon Cooper. I can see how
the passing of Harold Ramis was the nail in the coffin of a true sequel. Once
you remove two of the iconic actors (assuming Bill Murray was never going to
sign on in the first place), you really are unable to create the magic of the
original movie. For the record, I think the sequel was a fine movie, and better
than most sequels. Some of the jokes were old hat, but they were true to the
characters that delivered them. It was a continuation of the story vice a
rehash or stagnant plotline that did nothing to move the characters forward.
Effects. Now they’re dated, but at the time they were
phenomenal not just for a horror, but for a comedy. The painstaking detail that
went into the miniatures and the development of the ghost fighting equipment
was a really special moment in movie-making.
The techno-babble. Of course, we know we can’t cross the
streams because that would be bad, but they development a whole science for the
movie! That plays into the mythology, but it also tells a lot about how serious
the makers took the movie. It wasn’t just another Stripes or Caddyshack or
Planes, Trains and Automobiles… it was bigger than all of that.
The film makers delivered not only a great movie for the
time, but captured the imagination of millions in a way only Star Wars had been
able to that time. It’s an iconic movie, and I one that’s special to me and
millions of other big kids my age.
I’m going to take a few lines here to talk about the new movie.
If it has the same DNA as the original, it’s going to be just fine. I don’t
care if it’s got four women in the lead or not. It was never about the gender
of the stars, but the chemistry and the story.
I’m ready to believe you.
