Disclaimer: This is more of a review of an experience than the film itself. Ghostbusters was released twenty-seven years ago, and I’m going to go out on a limb that most people who would be reading this blog have already seen it.
In 1984, my mother and grandmother took me to the movie theater to see Ghostbusters. I was three years old, and I can’t remember the experience at all, but I have since seen the film on television, VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray at least a hundred times. It’s become one of my very favorite movies, and every time I watch it, I absolutely love it. It doesn’t get tired, it doesn’t get old, it stays just as funny. Like Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, and Airplane, Ghostbusters is probably as close to a perfect comedy as anyone can find. The lines are funny and memorable, the performances are fantastic and hilarious, the story is engaging, and the supernatural/Sci-fi elements help the movie to be just plain fun. The script was deftly written by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd and gives the audience one funny, witty, and memorable line after another, although a few were ad-libbed, woven into a really captivating story. Ivan Reitman’s direction is immaculate and brings that script to life in a way no other director probably could. The performances from Bill Murray to Rick Moranis to Steven Tash (the goofy student in Doctor Venkman’s lab) are all spectacular, the characters are endearing (Walter Peck and Dean Yager, excluded), and the main cast has a fantastic chemistry, playing off each other in a way that’s almost never been seen before or since.
The thing is, watching Ghostbusters on a 32,” 72,” or even on a 108” television screen is just not as engaging and immersive as watching it on the big screen at a movie theater, and it can’t bring the film to life in quite the same way.
Audiences across the country (at select theaters in select cities) were given a rare opportunity to see this incredible comedy the way it was meant to be seen. Ghostbusters came back to theaters for three nights this October, a fitting month if there ever was one. I went to the local AMC theater to see the movie again, this past Thursday, October 27th.
While I can sometimes be a bit annoyed to see children coming into a theater, I was actually pleased that parents were bringing their kids twenty-seven years after my mother and grandmother brought me to see Ghostbusters. When the film started, I was a little disappointed that the picture hadn’t been cleaned up, but I quickly told myself that this is what I saw when I was three and can no longer remember—this was the experience I came to have. The special effects, which were state of the art in 1984, still hold up very well today…okay, the stop-motion animated terror dogs look pretty cheesy by today’s standards, but I stand by my statement in regard to other effect in the movie. In fact, many of the practical effects used in the film just look better than CGI we see in most films these days; nothing looks more like it’s actually happening than something that is actually happening.
Several more shows have been added this weekend, and of course, on Halloween, so if you’re a fan (if you’re not, you have a problem) and you haven’t seen Ghostbusters in the theater yet this month, I urge you to tomorrow if you can. There is an extensive list of shows on the official Ghostbusters facebook page.
