Throwback Thursday- Ghostbusters

Logline: Three unemployed parapsychology professors set up shop as a unique ghost removal service.

Cast: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis

Directed by: Ivan Reitman

No particular reason as to why I chose Ghostbusters to review today other than the fact that I watched it last weekend and it's fresh in my mind. I think that it's cool to add in that the director of this movie now has a son, Jason Reitman. Jason has started off his career making a big splash with films such as Juno, Up in the Air, Thank You for Smoking, and Young Adult. Anywhoo, on to the review which I'm going to try to make as easy of a read as possible.

Summary

Ghostbusters  is about three professors who specialize in parapsychology. They all lose their jobs and decide to turn their biggest hobby into a full-time job. They've created a mechanism that lets them see ghosts, so they create a paranormal protection agency and call themselves the Ghostbusters. This is the story of three men who create a ghost prison in an abandoned New York City firehouse and the complications that arise when a demigod by the name of Zuul tries to take over the world.

Review

Throwback Thursdays are a weird beast to tackle. I've chosen a few movies from 2010 to do as throwbacks, but I felt recently that I was kind of coping out on the whole idea by doing so. There isn't really much difference between movies from 2010 and the movies now in 2012. But when you go back to 1984 when Ghostbusters was released, things become much harder to judge. 

What I will say, is that the creators knew how to sell this original idea. They stacked the cast with arguably the best comedic actor at the time (and maybe of all time now), attached a good director, and made one of the most catchy and memorable theme songs in movie history. This movie is filled with many classic events. The Pillsbury Dough Boy walking around NYC has to be one of the most memorable scenes in any movie from the 80's. Bill Murray was in his prime when this movie was released and he's great in this. I could go on and on about the things that I thought were great, but there were also some flaws.

This movie suffers from a very slow pace. I felt, and please don't slay me for this, that at times the film dragged on and it got boring. Somewhere in the second act things started slowing down. I'm not sure why, or when the slowness happened, but I felt that for a solid half hour I was really bored. All the way up until the Pillsbury Dough Boy scene. I think this may be due to the fact that the CG was really old and there were a lot of scenes that have been done over and over since this movie's release. I'm sorry for the lack of examples - this is definitely one of my least detailed reviews, but I was really tired when I watched this and didn't take many notes. This kind of leads me into my topic of the day, even though the review section is kind of left indecisive today.

 

Topic of the Day

Re-watching a movie that is widely considered a classic, but made anywhere from 20-100 years ago.

There are so many things to consider both in watching the movie and reviewing it. It's so hard to sit through some classics because many movies since then have either copied their comedy making it overused, used their formula making things predictable, or just straight up improved on the aspects in which it was considered a classic for in the first place. Being that Ghostbusters was made before my date of birth, I couldn't even tell you what people expected from movies in the 80's. I'm assuming this is definitely of the upper echelon though.

When I review an old film and try to find things to learn from it, I really have to base my learning off pure storytelling. In terms of comedy and ideas, a lot are now outdated, so there isn't much substance I can take from. Understanding what made it a classic is probably your best bet on learning something from an old film; sometimes the very basics of filmmaking can be what an aspiring filmmaker needs to touch up on to be great.

I know I sure had this toy when I was a kid!

Consensus

Ghostbusters is widely considered a classic by the general public. It's definitely a movie for all ages. It contains Bill Murray in his prime, a classic Pillsbury Dough Boy scene, and basic storytelling with a completely original idea. Since this review is being penned in via 2012, I can only make an assumption that mostly everything in this movie is original, making every cliché somewhat excusable. As far as storytelling goes, aside from a stretched out second act, the movie is pretty enjoyable and it's something I think everyone should see if they haven't - if not for the entertainment, at least for the history. This doesn't get the classic rating that everyone else probably gives it, but this is my own opinion and it's still not bad by any means.

7.8/10