PG, 105 min.
Director: Ivan Reitman
Writers: Dan Aykroyd, Harold
Ramis
Starring: Bill Murray, Dan
Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts, William
Atherton, Ernie Hudson
30 years ago today “Ghost
Busters”—it’s two words on the title card—opened in theaters and became not
just a movie, but a cultural reference, as many 80s films seemed to do. You don’t
see individual movies become such a phenomenon anymore. Even the Marvel
Universe movies became what they are as a group of films rather than individuals.
“Ghostbusters” had a life of its own.
The movie isn’t absolutely
amazing or anything, but it is damn good for the silly thing it’s trying to be.
It’s a comedy about a group of guys who catch ghosts for a living. That’s not a
premise that you’d expect to continue to resonate 30 years down the road on
anything more than a cult level. But “Ghostbusters” seems to be a universally
beloved movie, and with some of the dialogue written by its stars Dan Aykroyd
and Harold Ramis, I suppose it isn’t that surprising after all.
One line that always gets me
is squirreled in there subtly in the opening moments in such a way that it’s
easy to miss. The team is investigating their first supernatural phenomenon in
the New York Library and Aykroyd says, “Listen. Do you smell something?” Again,
it’s just a silly little throwaway line, but I think it gets at the heart of
the simplicity that makes this comedy so appealing over the decades.
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