Ghostbusters Made $238 Million. It's Still a Creep With a Proton Pack

Every October somebody puts on Ghostbusters, and every October everybody agrees it's perfect. It made $238.6 million in the U.S. and Canada with its 1985 re-release, beat Beverly Hills Cop to become the biggest comedy of the decade, spent seven straight weeks at number one and went into the National Film Registry in 2015. Ray Parker Jr.'s song went to number one too. I'm not here to deny any of that. I'm here to ask you to watch the thing with the sound up.

Start with Peter Venkman, Bill Murray's man. The first time we meet him he's running a psychic test, giving electric shocks to a young man and flirting with the young woman he is supposed to be testing. That's not a scientist. That's a supervisor who has already been sent to two trainings.

Then he meets Dana Barrett, Sigourney Weaver, who comes to the Ghostbusters because there's a demon in her refrigerator. Venkman takes the case mostly to get closer to her. Fine; men have done more for less. But when Dana gets possessed, the movie plays her writhing and coming on to him as the payoff, and Common Sense Media's review points out that none of it is her choosing. It's the one haunting in the picture the audience is invited to enjoy.

Now look at the villain. It isn't Gozer. Gozer shows up late and turns into a marshmallow. The real heavy is Walter Peck, an inspector from the Environmental Protection Agency, who asks a reasonable question: what's in the unlicensed nuclear storage unit in the basement of a firehouse in Manhattan? Venkman mocks him. Peck shuts the thing off. The city fills with ghosts. The moral is that the man asking about the radioactive basement was the problem. In 1984 that was a joke. Now it's a cabinet position.

And then there's Winston Zeddemore, played by Ernie Hudson, hired mid-movie as the fourth Ghostbuster because business is booming. He arrives after the origin story, after the jokes are handed out, and gets the least to do of the four. Four men saved New York, and only three of them got to be in the first act.

It's still funny. Murray is still the most relaxed man ever to stand in front of an apocalypse; he plays the end of the world like a long line at the bank. Harold Ramis is still perfect. Rick Moranis is still a dog-shaped person. The special effects were the first big money ever spent on a comedy, and you can see every dime.

But a movie can be great and still be a fellow in a jumpsuit who won't stop calling your apartment. Ghostbusters is beloved because it's charming, and charm is the most effective way ever invented to get away with something. Ask any ghost. Ask any landlord.