the only enjoyable part of this movie was when the song said "busting makes me FEEL GOOD!" because it caught me off guard. that's literally it. conservative trash.
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i liked it as a kid but rewatching it as an adult all i see is a bully and his nerdy friends and the libertarian politics. Murray is just mean, not entertaining. i actually liked the all-women remake and was glad to see they made Murray’s cameo role an asshole.
its funny as hell, if you give the David Lynch Dune anything less than six stars I swear to god I'm rescinding my invitation to prom. that movie is important to me
It's funny there's so much nostalgia caught up in this one. When I try to think which parts from the actual movie I love I kinda come up blank. I mean the theme is funny and I liked Ecto Cooler as a kid but that's not a movie (and Slimer wasn't in the movie, he was the marketable spinoff character).
Plus all these people were making better movies at the time! Aykroyd was in Trading Places! Hell, Dragnet is pretty slight but it least it identified the villains as corrupt politicians teaming up with religious perverts
honestly I think one of my favorite parts of the movie is that venkman, who starts out clearly thinking the paranormal is horseshit, is hands down the most capable of them, while ray, who is balls deep committed to the whole supernatural thing, is fucking awful at ghostbusting.
I was exactly the right age and loved the two originals as a kid. Watching as an adult, the first one is tedious and barely recognisable as a comedy. Answer the Call was a much funnier movie.
Harold Raimis’s work is littered with too much horribly racist and conservative shit for it to be a coincidence. I thought Ghostbusters was an exception, but you’re right it’s still in the subtext.
every time we get another "don't cross the streams" reference somewhere i die inside a little more. the only acceptable references to make are "busting makes me feel good" and "i aint afraid o no ghosts", which coincidentally are the most nonspecific references
I would start with Yojimbo, tho I’m sure you’ve got plenty of recommendations. Yojimbo is shorter than 7 Samurai and is the essential “samurai movie that’s plotted like a western” movie, I think. also it is super badass
not only has most of it aged poorly but years later you also find out shit like that winston was originally going to be a former nasa engineer who was just as smart as the others, and somewhere between hiring ernie hudson and him showing up on set they rewrote him to just be some blue collar nobody
side note, ghostbusters afterlife's flagrant devotion to ONLY the original film pissed me off so much the sequels are just ghostbusters 3 and ghostbusters 4 now
if the premise of ghostbusters 4 is that no one remembers all the wild shit that happened in the second movie* then reitman jr has made room in the canon for the lady ghostbusters to be set in the same new york city as the first two, oops
my headcanon about ghostbusters is that this is just how New York is. There's always several overlapping ghost problems and and as many groups of ghostbusting folks as it takes. Because they're residents of the city, they never look up to notice other nonsense happening outside of their drama.
i remember watching this for the first time in college with some friends and just kinda sitting there the whole movie. do not understand how this unfunny-ass movie ended up being a cultural touchstone
They do explain Ghosts but it's fast: "Sir, what you had there was what we refer to as a Focused, Non-Terminal, Repeating Phantasm, or a Class 5 Full-Roaming Vapor . . . a real nasty one too"
"Non-Terminal" - they're not "Dead people", they're creatures of smoke
Omg Katie I don’t always agree but generally pre-90s, we do. it’s ones like this where I’m like MFERS MOVIES HAVE IMPROVED. COMEDY AGES POORLY. At 31 I wouldn’t tell most folks to watch some aughts comedies i loved. You seen fucking GROUNDHOG DAY? Rape Culture The Film? Absolutely unhinged.
i haven't, no. i probably ought to given how many things parody it but i can't be assed too much. @stonedbutchblues.bsky.social is that another 'classic' we're going to watch at some point
I will proudly suggest my pet nic cage films (while FULLY understanding your angle on cage lmao) but I ain’t about to say “yeah watch the mean r*pey movie”.
Oh don’t even waste your time. Almost any re-use of the trope is better. It is mean spirited, misogynistic, rapey, and BORING. Hot take: comedy in the 80s by and large couldn’t tell a laugh from the sound of a jackhammer.
Oh! There’s an UNCOMFORTABLY long stretch in the middle of the movie where he keeps getting denied by the woman lead and uses the Groundhog Day effect to try to date her again every day for a while. Sometimes this results in trying really creepy shit and one time he gets uncomfortably aggressive.
I quite literally had to turn the movie off when I went back to it a couple years ago. I’ve given a lot of folks an unfortunate “glass shattering” moment about it.
I mean you're not supposed to sympathize with his attempts to force his way into sex, he is an asshole until he learns humility after hundreds of loops
the cool thing about groundhog day is that like a billion other movies and tv shows have stolen the groundhog day premise and most of them do it way better than groundhog day (shoutout to russian doll and palm springs)
there are a lot of great pre-90s movies! hell, 70s 80s and 90s are some of my top rated decades (though sample size plays a role), but yeah blade runner is awful https://letterboxd.com/katherinetea/film/blade-runner/
Oh it’s not to say there are NO films I like pre-90s but between problematic content and just…different styles of writing/editing/cinematography/pacing makes it something I don’t put a lot of time into pursuing. Plus I’m busy watching esoteric YouTube video essays and King of the Hill yet again.
Katie, what I appreciate most about your takes on ancient movies is the fresh perspective
I loved this film as a kid who had read hundreds of scifi books and really enjoyed engaging with questions like the core premise, but my blind spots were so vast I didn't even recall the garbage around it
Respect. I do think that Daryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer are great in it despite not being given much to work with, but I'm probably being too generous to it because I'm reading it as a trans allegory regardless of original intent. (In any case there are so much better trans allegories.)
Tangentially, I played Nier Automata recently for the first (second, third, and fourth? Ok. Maybe I stagnated on the fourth iteration) and I really did not expect it to be such a thoroughly weird experience. Love that it has the same "we have to kill god for putting us through this" vibe as...
There’s a (un)surprising amount of movies from that time period where the leading men basically force themselves onto the women and the women just find it so “sexy” that they fuck ‘em or whatever. Like, how can you write a rape into a story and believe it’s not rape? That’s delusional right?
ACAB. Infuriating that a premise about resistance to normalized corporate dehumanization and exploitation, and incredible acting of the other replicant characters that wonderfully conveys their anger and determination, is mostly wasted on attempting to get us to empathize with a rapey cop.
It's not terrible but I don't think it has much to offer if you don't have any nostalgia for the original. I've forgotten the plot, let's put it like that.
Something I think about a lot in ghostbusters, is how Venkman already had the sedation equipment and medication ready before he knew zuul had possessed her. He was bringing it with him for the date.
I thought the implication was that she was having trouble sleeping bc of the haunting and so he just grabbed a bunch from her cabinet? I probably imagined that.
I watched it yesterday and basically he comes to her apartment with no idea about the possession and after bringing her to the bed, it cuts and covers the other characters for a moment and then it's back to Venkman saying he gave her Thorazine in huge quantities
People look back on that eera with rose colored glasses, but Porky's? Revenge of the Nerds? I truly have a hard time respecting anyone who says they like 80s comedies. Might as well call yourself a rape enjoyer, because that's all anyone seemed to find funny back then.
Most people only like this movie because they saw it when they were literally children. It's not funny and Murray's character is uncomfortably creepy to watch.
this is a squarely correct take, and it's going to draw some pretty rotten people out of the woodwork, which sucks but might be a good thing ultimately so they out themselves
Kingpin might be his best role because he's playing a guy who seems charming but is actually a sleazy asshole and a creep, which seems more in line with actual Bill Murray
It's been said that his talent was being funny in a way that made the audience feel like THEY were funny. It's the Han Solo thing. You felt like your smart-ass buddy fell through the screen and was winking at you from the other side. That's how it was, anyway. Comedy ages like milk, though.
The main antagonist (outside of the EPA) is an androgynous twink from another dimension bent on world domination, so add queerphobia to the list of grievances. Gozer did nothing wrong.
its balanced out in Ghostbusters 2 where the villain Vigo the Carpathian was played by a real life monster. read up on Wilhelm von Homburg for a wild horrid time
when I was 22 a coworker made everyone watch some 80s movie about nerds (not Revenge). It was. so. boring. Just very little aged well and the jokes were flat
So I'm totally with you. Older comedies often suck. The only movie from my youth I make people watch is The Core
I’m really enjoying your reviews, thanks, even (especially?) if I disagree. GHOSTBUSTERS was a *huge* favourite of mine as a teen but it has aged terribly these past decades, in all the ways you describe, and I can’t believe how many guys my age refuse to see that. It’s fun AND conservative trash!
Lol sometimes I have this immediate defensive reaction to your review and then I’m like - ok but fair and my experience of it is so of its time. It’s cool to see how someone younger sees something that I forgave because it was maybe all of had.
I joke that being a DOCTOR WHO fan really helps with this. The show has succeeded in staying true to itself for 60 years while also constantly changing with the times. You watch old episodes and cringe at how BADLY they’ve aged while loving them anyway. Movies are no different.
Also, while I’m venting, I despised the recent AFTERLIFE for giving Bill Murray its big hero moment and steamrolling over Dan Aykroyd, who has *always* been funnier. Totally pointless film, wasting Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd.
the funny thing is Dan Akroyd's original script was almost entirely dudes bustin' ghosts in outer space as a sci-fi action movie with almost no exposition - but the budget for that movie was unfeasible at the time and it got re-written into a lower budget comedy
the man just wants to make a film featuring insane paranormal AND extraterrestrial antics that blow your mind while also grounding it in a complex story about human nature that subverts your expectations
that's like literally a utopian vision but I respect that he keeps trying
It's funny you bring that up. I just watched miracle workers and really started noticing how aggressively neoliberal Lorne Michaels stuff is. Always was the case but Miracle workers really cemented it for me
the idea that people are going to be mad at you about this is just.... wild and depressing (I don't mean people making jokes, i mean the ones actually _upset_)
The wife and I watched this at a cinema in 2021 , to support our local struggling business. We were silent for a while afterwards until I looked at my wife and asked " Does Ghostbusters not hold up anymore ?. " She sadly agreed and we moved on with our lives.
I'm so glad my older brother thought it was funny to show me movies like The Fly (1986) and Alien when I was 10, so those are the kind of movies that make me feel nostalgic
You’re 100% right about the Reagan politics though. Not quite as bad as Back To The Future’s shitty conservative Reagan politics, but it’s also not quite as fun as Back To The Future, so it evens out.
I still thoroughly enjoy BTTF whenever I watch them, but the politics and values are EGREGIOUSLY bad. “Big SUVs, high-paying jobs, suburban homes, and beige furniture are Good Timelines, motorcycles, downtown night life, and Black people in the neighbourhood are Bad Timelines. Women like violence.”
(Also, at the risk of being serious, the “science” was part of the joke. When it was made, treating ghosts as a quantifiable, scientifically measurable phenomenon was a weird and funny idea. Ghosts had always been fought by priests and mystics and shit. New York academics and a working class Black..
Yeah, Bill Murray's schtick was... not good then, and not good now, but the idea of science bros zapping devil dogs and ancient gods was such a breath of fresh air after creepy pie soup girls and even creepier priests
…guy was a pointed subversion. Ghostbusters was made for a world that had never had Ghostbusters. But, like John Constantine, it fell victim to its own success and the pointed subversion became the new paradigm, leaving later audiences with no context for getting the idea.
People love Ghostbusters and tbh it's because of the cartoon and the song. That's the legacy they should be passing the torch on, not literally reanimating the dead to pass the torch.
I like the movie but it really is true that folks have been mistakenly crediting Ivan Reitman for the precious childhood memories given to them by J. Michael Straczynski.
If the studio wanted to make a shit-zillion dollars they should pitch an animated movie where the gang is in their 50s, looking exactly like their TRGB designs, and they get the band back together to bust a really big one. Or just reboot TRGB with an origin story. Anything.
I remember loving this film as a kid. Then years later someone said washed again but from the point of view of understanding how libertarians think. And my job bounced off the floor.
It was however incredbly irresponsible of Peck, a supposedly educated fellow who fancies himself a smarty-pants, to simply turn off the ECU and not even ask Egon for the shutdown sequence.
Other than that, I generally agree with your review, but also: ha ha Ray gets ghost beej, lol
…This entire line of thought now irritates me because now this whole time I'm only thinking "Egon Spengler could've made everything environmentally friendly & climate-considerate" & IT WOULD'VE BEEN A FUNNY SUB-PLOT IN THE SEQUELS😭😭
Why didn't GB3 have even 1 of the Peck cutscenes discuss this😭
Fair assessment. I can find things I like about the film (the practical effects, some of the performances, the killer theme song), but you’re right-on when it comes to the icky gender politics and the anti-regulation messaging.
The only vague sense of fond nostalgia I hold for Ghostbusters is the animated cartoon series from the late 80s, watching the movie as an adult just gave me the uncomfortable chuckle vibes for exactly the stuff you said. And this is me fully realizing these cartoons were all made to sell toys.
for me the reason it was on my mind simply because it was hard not to be. the entire narrative has a right wing slant. i definitely get what you're saying about them being anti-action heroes, but them being personified all-american free thinkers made me not a fan. effects are solid though, v true
I’ve had to stop watching so many movies I loved as a kid when I was trying to introduce them to my kids because of the rampant casual racism or sexism.
people talk about this movie all the time and I never get the appeal, it's never even slightly interested me to watch it. I'm glad I wasn't wrong in that instinct
Wait'll you see Ghostbusters 2. I loved the first film and I HATE the sequel. It's like Murray and Ramis decided "Let's just not write jokes this time"
Oh, and Dan Ackroyd has more ghost sex. Offscreen, thank goodness, but the other Ghostbusters laugh it off. "LOL, necrophilia; that's our Ray..."
that's very silly that you would say that. you must be new here, as no i am not a contrarian. you're aware that not everything in the 80s was reactionary, right? it's not like progressives disappeared for an entire decade lmao
All of the “criticisms” in that post are true statements but it never occurred to me once that they were supposed to be read at face value rather than satire. Even as a kid I saw that.
Yeah! The Clash and Public Enemy and Robocop and cyberpunk and Hellblazer and Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys and Swamp Thing and Repo Man and The Minutemen and Talking Heads and Videodrome and ACT UP and the IRA were all super conservative!
So everything from the 80s that isn’t conservative is also proof that everything from the 80s is conservative? Brilliant. Truly ironclad logic. I see no faults or fallacies here!
I have a theory that most 80s nostalgia is simply for the music. I consume a whole lot of 80s media and outside of a handful of movies and Miami Vice I find most screen from the era entirely unwatchable now. But that sound was something else, huh?
If it's any consolation, even the cast didn't have high hopes for it, ridiculing the movie in a distributors' presentation, but Ray Parker Jr. and his Ghostbusters theme literally saved the movie.
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I'm going to need a good cup of coffee to read through this thread.
the 2008 game is great
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxjNOv5QPzM
*GHOSTBUSTERS 2 SPOILERS
mentioning just in case you were interested, btw, not "This has been done before." I think it's fine to keep saying it.
They do explain Ghosts but it's fast: "Sir, what you had there was what we refer to as a Focused, Non-Terminal, Repeating Phantasm, or a Class 5 Full-Roaming Vapor . . . a real nasty one too"
"Non-Terminal" - they're not "Dead people", they're creatures of smoke
https://youtu.be/0tdyU_gW6WE
I haven’t seen it in so long I don’t remember
https://nypost.com/2022/10/17/insiders-reveal-bill-murrays-hostile-side-criticize-flirting/amp/
I loved this film as a kid who had read hundreds of scifi books and really enjoyed engaging with questions like the core premise, but my blind spots were so vast I didn't even recall the garbage around it
it won't be enough
You're right and should say it
Dan Aykroyd's Ghost O Face
or
Dan Aykroyd's Penis Hot Dog Nose
unless you're going by some kinda poltergeist rules where you can corporealize at times and give regular ones just to throw em off
god imagine being the spirit summoned at a seance and that's what they ask you to do
Until recently I thought he was played by David Carradine and was shocked to find out it wasn’t.
The resemblance is uncanny
I’d be a monster with a name like that too 😂
So I'm totally with you. Older comedies often suck. The only movie from my youth I make people watch is The Core
A problematic fave but I think of it often these days 😬
that's like literally a utopian vision but I respect that he keeps trying
people need to know how much a film fails to entertain
https://bsky.app/profile/rustbeltmike.bsky.social/post/3kaxh7v42lt23
Rock and roll
Inspiring the first black mayor
Etc
I do think Sigourney and Moranis give strong performances, and the climax probably has the best humor for my money.
Other than that, I generally agree with your review, but also: ha ha Ray gets ghost beej, lol
Why didn't GB3 have even 1 of the Peck cutscenes discuss this😭
Idk. Dan Aykroyd is autistic and I can always see that coming through and represented in the movies he does.
Bill Murray is a shitty human being and it is well documented so I try not to pay much attention to him.
Also never saw Titanic. Did you review Titanic?
I am dead inside
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tdyU_gW6WE&pp=ygUZYnVzdGluZyBtYWtlIG1lIGZlZWwgZ29vZA%3D%3D
Oh, and Dan Ackroyd has more ghost sex. Offscreen, thank goodness, but the other Ghostbusters laugh it off. "LOL, necrophilia; that's our Ray..."
You're just being contrary for the lulz right? How can someone who hates 'conservative trash' like anything about the 80s? That's the whole gestalt.
https://youtu.be/uqrIYkwPuL8?si=5uSHP9-d4oiwqE68