Who you gonna call?

Rating: 9/10 (16 December 2000)

I was 13 years old when my older sister took me to the theater to see "Ghostbusters" back in June 1984. I had just gotten out of school for summer vacation and we went an saw a movie that had us laughing our heads off. This movie has lost a little of its comic edge a decade-and-a-half later, but today its still a very funny special effects comedy. The Ghostbusters about a trio of paranormal scientists who go into business catching ghosts when they discover supernatural phenomenon plaguing New York City. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis are hilarious as the Ghostbusters, who spend lots of time flushing out spirits while making wise-cracks in between. Sigourney Weaver also stars in her first comedy as the Ghostbusters' first client, a musician who one day finds nasty spirits in her apartment and in the process falls in love with nutty Murray. Rick Moranis has some delightful comic moments as Weaver's nerdy neighbor, and Annie Potts (from TV's "Designing Women") is good too as the Ghostbusters' receptionist. Everybody is terrific in "Ghostbusters" with the exception of William Atherton as the villain who doesn't like the trio he refers to as "snowball artists". But the best performance comes from Bill Murray as Dr. Peter Venkman. This is one of his best film roles of his career. He's naturally funny every time he's on screen. One other major asset in "Ghostbusters" are the special visual effects by Richard Edlund, the maestro who worked on the "Star Wars" trilogy, the first two "Poltergeist" films, and the first Indiana Jones movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark". The effects in this movie help to make it not only funny but exciting too. This film should have won the Oscar for visual effects because there were far more special effects shots here then there was in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", the movie that beat out "Ghostbusters" for the visual effects Oscar for 1984. Also, I love the title song by Ray Parker Jr. (which also was Oscar nominated). The song was a smash hit on the radio during the summer of 1984 just as the movie was a smash hit in theaters. "Ghostbusters" helped to make the summer of 1984 memorable. If you can remember back then, this was the summer "Ghostbusters", "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", "Gremlins", and "The Karate Kid" dominated the box office. It also was the summer the PG-13 rating was created (thanks to the violence in "Temple of Doom" and "Gremlins", PG rated movies). And it also was the summer the Summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles and the U.S. Team dominated big time. The summer vacation of 1984 for me was absolutely one of my favorite summers of my life when I was a kid, and "Ghostbusters" was a big part of it. Even though I didn't laugh quite as hard at it after seeing it again recently, it's still a very funny movie.
***1/2 (out of four)