The 1984 version, not the Melissa McCarthy one….
I’ve decided I’m going to write a weekly review on some of my favorite movies and I’m starting this list off with a movie that some days I consider to be my favorite movie of all time. It’s a weird/tough question to answer, what is your favorite movie? What does that even mean? The movie you have watched the most in your life? The movie you know the most quotes too? Is it simply the movie you enjoy watching the most? Well if so, rthe answer to all three of those questions is Ghostbusters. It came out 4 years before I was even born, it came out shortly after Michael Jordan was drafted to the NBA, this movie is super old, but it has and will always stand the test of time. Regarded as one of the greatest comedies of all time, to me this movie is can summed up in two words, almost perfect.
To this day I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen this movie, earlier this year AMC decided to air Ghostbusters everyday. (Thank you AMC). Regardless of which part the movie was at, I found myself immediately sucked into the Ghostbusters vortex and couldn’t get out. Ghostbusters is kind of like my sunken place (Get Out reference). There’s just something about this movie that I find truly magical, maybe it’s because I owned the Ghostbusters Firehouse growing up as a kid, and still have my Stay Puff Marshmallow Man toy, or maybe because I just think it’s such an incredible concept for a movie, that I can’t help but love it. Ghostbusters just holds a really special place in my heart, and it will be a movie that I know I will enjoy until the day I die, so I thought it was only fitting that I wrote a review for it.
You have to know the run down by now, Peter (Bill Murray), Ray (Dan Aykroyd) and Egon (Harold Ramis) all of whom are paranormal experts, but once their university grants dry up, it’s time for them to go into business for themselves. It’s up to them to protect the city of Manhattan from all things ghosts, before the all-powerful Gozer destroys it. Calling themselves The Ghostbusters, word spreads around town quickly and they soon become the talk of the country, as the city begins to become overrun with ghosts and they are the only ones who can stop it. They don’t do it alone; they bring in Winston (Ernie Hudson) of course after their plate gets a little too full. Let’s be clear, this is Bill Murray’s movie, the guy is a living legend and this is up there for one of his greatest roles. He has so many incredible one-liners in Ghostbusters, and the comedy is so natural. It doesn’t try to be funny it just is, something that a lot of comedies have a hard time doing today. The laughs are so subtle that if you’re not paying much attention it’s really easy to over look some hilarious stuff. Ghostbusters was written by two of its stars, Aykroyd and Ramis and honestly they are gods for it. This is such a unique and original idea, that I can’t even fathom ever coming up with an idea like this. It started off with Aykroyd and John Belushi writing a script for the movie, but when Belushi suddenly passed away, Ramis stepped in and helped him rewrite the movie, to become what we know now as The Ghostbusters. Not only did these two guys write the thing, they also were superb in it, the three of them are comedy legends, and it was really sad that Harold Ramis died before the 2016 version came out, because I wish he could have been apart of all the celebrations and reunions because he deserved to be there just as much as anybody else. Once Peter’s girlfriend Dana (Sigourney Weaver) gets possessed by a spiritual ghost, along with her over-protective nerdy neighbor Louis (Rick Moranis) things become personal for the team. I can’t stress enough how much I miss Rick Moranis, he retired from Hollywood shortly after his wife passed away, and he was an awesome actor. (Little Giants, Strange Brew!) The science-fiction queen herself Sigourney Weaver is fantastic in this movie, she really was a kick-ass chick back in the day, from this franchise to the Alien franchise. She will always be known as the nice lady who paid them in advance before she became a dog. Ghostbusters gave us a lot of memorable characters and performances, and helped launch the careers of many people, and it even gave us Slimer! It also gave us one of the coolest movies cars ever, the Echo 1 that thing was a real beaut.
Towards the end of Ghostbusters, something happens, a scene that for the life of me, I can’t explain why I love it so much. I think its badass, awesome looking, considering it was 1984 at the time, fantastic movie score playing and when I think about this movie, this is usually what comes to mind first. Maybe because these guys were just four average joes who happened to have unlicensed nuclear accelerators strapped to their backs, and could destroy life as we know it in a blink of an eye, but yet they were the only guys who could save the world from annihilation. This is supposed to be a comedy, yet this scene just gets me fired up every single time. So here’s that scene…. Nimble little minx isn’t she!
The last 30 minutes is all time for me, from the scene above to the showdown with Stay Puff. Let’s just stop and talk about the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man for a second. “It just popped in there, I tried to think of the most harmless thing,” as Ray puts it. When coming up with character Aykroyd he wanted something that seemed puffy and cute — but given the right circumstance everything can be turned into dark and evil. Stay Puff was something that could never possibly destroy The Ghostbusters, and he might have if they didn’t cross the streams. I just always find myself smiling when he comes on screen, I don’t know it’s something about a 100 foot marshmallow man that I find endearing. He’s just one of the most memorable things in all of movies, I swear to god. It just reminds me so much of a classic Godzilla movie, Stay Puff slowly walking down the streets of Manhattan destroying everything in its path, before a showdown with our boys. Not before ultimately getting roasted just like Ray used to do around the fires at Camp Waconda. I’ve always wondered how long it would take to clean up all that marshmallow? Were the people of Manhattan just going around eating all of it, like everyone loves marshmallows! Like the mayor just comes out and provides enough chocolate and gram crackers for a massive s’more party, actually if that movie is made today, that is 100 percent a post credit scene. Or did it kill a lot of people, like hot falling liquid marshmallow falling from the sky, that sounds so dangerous. But it would be a really cool way to go out now that I think about it. Why did they think it was a good idea to have a goddamn painting be the bad guy in the sequel, why make a sequel at all, it was fine with just one Ghostbusters, actually I like to pretend there is just one Ghostbusters. See these are questions you ask yourself when you have watched this movie as much as me.
When it comes down to it, this movie just makes me happy. I love when it’s on TV, I can quote the shit out of it. Bill Murray is one of my favorite people ever; it has everything I want in a movie. Laughs, action, great acting, writing and directing. It’s almost a perfect movie, I could go on forever about Ghostbusters, it’s a cult classic, a cinematic masterpiece. They just don’t make movies like this anymore, unfortunately they try to “reboot” or “remake” classics like these, and it’s a shame. I’m not even a big fan of Ghostbusters 2 it just doesn’t have the same effect on me as its predecessor. So just remember if someone asks you if you’re a god, you say YES!
Check ya later,
Nate’s Movie Tour Reviews — Ghostbusters = 92/100