Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Dr. Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) have been booted from their jobs at the university. They all decided to go into business for themselves as “Ghostbusters”, where they catch and destroy paranormal anomalies throughout the city of New York.

When I think of the term “classic film” the first names which come to mind are: Casablanca, Psycho and The Apartment. To somehow add a film like Ghostbusters just doesn’t seem right in certain ways. It’s a film that I watched repeatedly as a child and can’t seem to separate from that moment in my life. It is one of the best examples of a film that I can’t seem to remove the nostalgic goggles for whenever I watch it.

Murray is the likeable asshole who if you’re not one of his close friends, or a pretty woman, he won’t give you anything but some very harsh sarcasm, Aykroyd is the child that’s refused to grow up, and Ramis is the guy who looks at everything as seriously as a plague (i.e. the real scientist of the bunch). The dynamic is what makes the film work. If you can’t buy these three starkly different people being able to stand each other day in and day out then this movie will never hit you the same way that it does everyone of those bloggers who keep posting all of those ridiculous news articles begging for the third film to (or not to) be made.

When you end up adding Janine (Annie Potts) as the quick lipped receptionist, Winston (Ernie Hudson) as the new guy who just sees this as a job, and Dana (Sigourney Weaver) as the first client and Venkman’s love interest and eventual damsel in distress you have yourself a serviceable ridiculous 80s comedy movie with a sprinkle of horror moments added. The movie chronicles not only the rise of the Ghostbusters as a corporation, but also the relationship that they have with Dana as a client.

The movie seats itself in a horror based reality, existence of ghosts and demons, but lives off its characters and the comedy that comes from them. If it weren’t for how Venkman mocks Spengler and Stantz then it would never have made as much of a stamp on history. Why I don’t view this film as classic and historically relevant in cinema is that I think that comedy isn’t that uncommon back then. Especially when you look at the rest of Ivan Reitman’s films back then, including Stripes and Meatballs. It gives Bill Murray’s character something to point and laugh at and we as an audience can’t stop going, “he’s right,” so we laugh and when all is said and done we leave with a smile on our face.

Not to say this is a bad thing, but it leads me to question as to why this movie made this list of historic must see films. Is it the fact that the movie ended up being one of those that ended up becoming so a part of the world’s popular culture? That’s the only reason I can think of. While I doubt I couldn’t make a personal movie list like this without mentioning this film somehow I feel like the movie is being misrepresented and will end up being misunderstood by future generations. How many people who didn’t grow up with this movie actually love it as much as those people who watched it to fall asleep to every night at the age of eight and wishing they had one of those proton packs running around catching ghosts actually love this movie?

IMDB says 7.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes says 94%
I say 7.0/10