Ghostbusters

Forty years later (yikes, really?), this quintessentially ‘80s supernatural comedy still holds its own. Dwelling somewhere between parody and homage, it enjoys the sarcastic winks of the former and the enchanting conceptual leaps of the latter. The focus is a small group of paranormal hobbyists who go into business for themselves, pouring their hearts and savings into chasing ghosts when they’re fired from their cushy professorial positions. Cue the low-rent TV commercials, city-wide spectral invasion, rampant uptick in business and overnight celebrity. Their industry may be silly and impossible, but the idea of a business materializing from nowhere to fill a need nobody realized they had, that’s earthy and relatable. Ghostbusters makes hay in bridging the gap between those two extremes, of tying its more ridiculous conceits to the practicality of billing an outraged hotel manager or training an overwhelmed new hire. The paradox is a crucial ingredient to its humor. So is the cast, a dynamite mix of SNL and SCTV alums that quakes with chummy, off-cuff hilarity. There’s so much laser-focused humor in this film that its matching narrative successes seem impossible. How was there time to tell a story, given so many goofs and asides? Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis are the straight men, vital geeks who wire gizmos and remain blissfully unaware of appearances; perfect castings for both. Egon (Ramis) is the no-nonsense eccentric, absolutely convinced about the scientific merits of drilling a hole in his head, while Ray (Aykroyd) is cut from a more curious, excitable cloth. If you’ve spent any amount of time hanging around with the pocket protector crowd, you’ll probably recognize and appreciate both personality types. Bill Murray, meanwhile, basically exists outside the film’s reality, riffing on the absurdity of the premise like an ironic observer. They all get great lines, but Murray’s are the best, and from all indications they were almost completely improvised. He’s a live-action Statler and/or Waldorf in a proton pack. Some of the effects haven’t held up so well - better resolution scans have made the mattes obvious and some of the stop motion work is downright tacky - but again, those play into the ruse and can be written off as friendly nods to the past. And even that generalization isn’t true across the board. The famous Stay-Puft march through Manhattan still looks convincing, the superimposed ghosts are simple but effective and the practical effects (like the guys’ heavy-duty hardware) look great. That’s still a pretty high batting average for visually-ambitious films of this vintage. Most importantly, everything hits just right, from the punchy humor and subdued soundtrack cuts to the broader nostalgia for a world that would accept and endorse such colorful, fallible heroes. If there’s a Mount Rushmore for sharp, expertly-paced sci-fi ensemble comedies (that seems awfully specific), this is on it. I grinned the whole way through.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]