Ghostbusters; or the best damned movie that ever was or ever will be

Directed by Ivan Reitman
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.