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Venkman (Bill Murray), Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Spengler (Harold Ramis)
are a trio of parapsychologists (with various degrees of professionalism)
who live a comfortable life holding a seat at NYU but nobody holding them
accountable ... until they are held accountable for and are evicted by the
university's dean. Fresh out of a job, they decide to take their
paranormal researches to business level and become the Ghostbusters. Soon
enough, they've got headquarters, a car ... but no assignments until Dana
Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) shows up claiming her apartment is haunted.
Venkman is immediately charmed by the lady, so he takes up the
investigation himself but finds no traces of paranormal presence in her
place - but since he desparately wants to date her, he packs it into nice
words. What he doesn't realize though is Dana's apartment building is one
of the gates to the netherworld, and a bunch of demons want to make it to
our dimension from theirs, soon possessing Dana and her nerdy neighbour
(Rick Moranis) to ultimately open the gate. The Ghostbusters know little
of that yet, but they do capture their first actual ghost (the
soon-to-be-popular Slimer), and are so happy about it they even hire a
fourth man, blue collar Winston (Ernie Hudson). Soon enough, they become
celebrities and manage to capture ghost after ghost around town - before
almost being shut down by an overly ambitious EPA delegate (William
Atherton), but saved by the mayor (David Margulies) himself, who tasks
them with putting an end to the ghostly invasion and save New York City.
This leads them back to Dana's apartment building, where super demon Gozer
is just finding passage into our world - and probing the mind of the
Ghostbusters, he manifests himself - as a giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man,
starting to crush the city under his feet. With this new and unexpected
threat, will the Ghostbusters come up with a counter-strategy? Ghostbusters
sure is an iconic 1980s flick - but frankly, taken as a whole, it's not
all that good: It's script is formulaic and meandering at the same time
and features plotholes and leaps of reason, the ending is all too
predictable, many of the supporting characters are little more than
cardboard cut-outs who really seem to announce their character arcs from
square one, and even the characterizations of the leads is hazy at times. At
the same time, it's not all that surprising that the movie's as liked as
it is, it contains many iconic images (from the Ghostbusters logo to their
car and outfits to Slimer, to name a few), its theme song by Ray Parker jr
is one of the catchiest 80s mainstream tunes, Bill Murray doing his shtick
is great as ever, and he leads a very solid cast, and the special effects
hold their own even today. And on top of everything, this is just a fun
movie. Nothing great, really, but good popcorn entertainment.
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