"Godspeed Your Love To Me"

Rating: 8/10 (8 December 2009)

If nothing else the popularity of the film Ghost guaranteed a revival of that great love song Unchained Melody. It's always a pleasure when good music is heard on the airways and we have Ghost to thank for this little treasure making a comeback.
Ghost also provided Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore with a couple of career roles as a typical yuppie couple settling in Tribeca when tragedy strikes one of them. But as it turns out, that's only the beginning of the story.
If you were to describe Ghost I guess the best way you could describe it would be a drama/fantasy with some humorous moments, mostly as a result of the casting of Whoopi Goldberg as a fake psychic. But she comes into the story in the middle of the film. Patrick and Demi, those brat pack alumni are now eager young urban professionals, Demi makes and sells her own pottery and Patrick works in a bank, in the high end area of one, he's not just a teller. When we meet them they are starting to fix up their Tribeca loft with one of Swayze's co-workers, Tony Goldwyn.
But one fateful night after seeing a performance of MacBeth, Swayze is killed as a result of a street mugging. But was it just that, a simple robbery? Not by a longshot and Swayze who was killed before his time is angry enough to stay on Earth and find out what really happened.
Of course he needs an ally and that's where Whoopi comes in. Turns out that there might be a little truth in her advertising as a spiritualist and consultant to the dead. Good enough for Whoopi to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, the other Oscar Ghost won was for original screenplay.
But you won't forget Patrick and Demi as a pair of literal starcrossed lovers. You also know that the universal fates will reunite them because people who care for each other as much as they did aren't destined to stay apart.
I do so love Unchained Melody. Introduced originally by blues singer Al Hibbler in the Fifties it got a revival a decade later by the Righteous Brothers. Tony Bennett also recorded a fine version and after his death a previously unreleased version of it was put out by Bing Crosby's estate. It's a perfect song for the theme for Swayze and Moore.
One of the best love stories of the last decade of the last century, despite the tragedy that takes place, Ghost is one feel good motion picture.