Ghostbusters

GHOSTBUSTERS (Ivan Reitman, 1984)

When the university’s Board of Regents shut down their paranormal studies lab in GHOSTBUSTERS, Drs. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) direct their energies into a commercial enterprise. No one in New York City except for these newly unemployed academics can capture supernatural pests and remove them from the premises. They set up shop in a former fire station and wait for the calls to come pouring in.

With supernatural activity increasing across the Eastern Seaboard, the Ghostbusters have gone into business at the ideal time. Some of their clients are merely dealing with spirits making nuisances of themselves. Unusual phenomena, like eggs flying out of the carton and frying on the countertop, spook Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver), but finding an ancient god of destruction’s portal to another dimension in her refrigerator indicates she better call in the professionals right away to examine her Central Park West apartment.

Although GHOSTBUSTERS requires a team effort to thwart the bad forces attacking the city, it’s really Murray’s film despite being written by Aykroyd and Ramis. His performance drips with insincerity, and much of the film’s humor flows from how unserious he is about the apparition invasion. Murray gives the sense that Venkman is in this parapsychology racket because it gets him close to highly suggestible women. His flippant attitude cancels whatever threats the ghosts, demons, or government officials might raise.

Each of the other Ghostbusters fails to be developed beyond his defining quality. Aykroyd is the fast-talking enthusiast. Ramis fills the role of the bookish Ghostbuster who designs their tools of the trade. Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddmore brings a religious perspective to the happenings, although with as little as Ray and Egon are showcased, it’s curious that GHOSTBUSTERS needed to add another paranormal investigator to take on the workload.

GHOSTBUSTERS provides a few jolts to confirm that the heroes are facing credible antagonists, but even those moments reside within the playful tone director Ivan Reitman maintains. The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man epitomizes the mixture of comedic scares the film strives to achieve. GHOSTBUSTERS’ most enduring image is an absurd comic variation on Godzilla and King Kong. The damage he wreaks is real, yet this cuddly manifestation of evil looks too silly to be anything but funny. The greatest weapon in GHOSTBUSTERS is the ability to shrug off all sorts of supernatural terrors with a few well-placed jokes.

Grade: B

Revenge of the Nerds

REVENGE OF THE NERDS (Jeff Kanew, 1984)

The eternal war between the athletically and academically inclined rages on in REVENGE OF THE NERDS with jocks asserting their superiority until the brainiacs fight back.  The unlikely leaders in this turn of events are entering freshmen Lewis Skolnick (Robert Carradine) and Gilbert Lowell (Anthony Edwards), best friends who are eager to get started at Adams College.  The school’s computer science program is among the best in the nation, and the female-to-male enrollment ratio holds the promise that they might engage in some extracurricular studying of anatomy as well.

Lewis and Gilbert’s initial enthusiasm is doused when the upperclassmen of Alpha Beta accidentally burn their own house to the ground and claim the freshmen dormitory as their new home.  The administration addresses the problem by allowing homeless new students to join fraternities and move into Greek housing.  Unfortunately Lewis, Gilbert, and a handful of other social outcasts--violinist Arnold Poindexter (Timothy Busfield); nose-picking, self-declared rebel Dudley “Booger” Dawson (Curtis Armstrong); openly gay Lamar Latrell (Larry B. Scott); Japanese student Toshiro Takashi (Brian Tochi); and twelve-year-old Harold Wormser (Andrew Cassesse)-- fail to be accepted anywhere and must continue to be lodged in half of the gymnasium.  

Lewis’s relentless optimism and resourcefulness leads them to a battered house available for rent.  They tidy it up, and all seems well except they continue to be harassed.  Campus security and the Greek Council, led by one of their main Alpha Beta tormentors Stan Gable (Ted McGinley), refuse to intervene since they are not an officially recognized group.   

Using a close reading of a historically African-American fraternity’s bylaws, they secure probationary approval to become a chapter of Lambda Lambda Lambda, although it remains to be seen if they’ll muster the support to make it permanent.  Finally, it looks like they’ve found their niche, but the Alpha Betas and women of Pi Delta Pi humiliate them yet again.  Enough is enough.  The nerds must have revenge.

REVENGE OF THE NERDS has some laughs at the expense of its awkward heroes but typically holds them in high regard, especially in comparison to the brutes and snobs who pick on them.  While the film trots out some unflattering stereotypes--Lamar is a floppy-wristed queen, and Toshiro substitutes his l’s and r’s--the tone is not exactly mean-spirited.  The fellow nerds accept one another unconditionally regardless of what makes each of them social pariahs.  For example, Lamar’s friends develop a javelin that compensates for his limp wrists.  The redesigned equipment lets him excel in one of the Greek homecoming games essential to the Tri-Lambdas survival.  This hardly qualifies Lamar as an enlightened or respectful portrayal of a homosexual, yet overall the film doesn’t make him a target of derision.  It’s not a lot, but it’ll do in this context.

Surprisingly, the nerds perpetuate a nasty streak of behavior toward women that violates the film’s general live-and-let-live attitude, and it stains what is otherwise intended as raunchy but lighthearted fun.  Revenge on Pi Delta Pi comes in the guise of a panty raid that distracts from the nerds rigging the sorority’s bathrooms with multiple cameras that transmit live feeds back to the Tri-Lambs.  Even allowing that a film such as REVENGE OF THE NERDS exists for a little titillation, the scenes of the Lambda Lambda Lambda guys sitting in their living room watching for hours as the women undress and bathe are very tawdry.  From the leering comments they make to the pornographic-like presentation of the nude women, the cruelness underlying these moments exceeds causing mere embarrassment over being seen naked.  In fact, most of the women are unaware they’ve had their privacy invaded.

That’s not the worst of it.  Lewis fixates on head Pi, and Stan’s girlfriend, Betty Childs (Julie Montgomery) and deceives her into having sex with him when she believes he’s her boyfriend.  A point of view shot behind his mask reads more like a horror film stalker sizing up his prey even though it’s intended to play up the supposed hilarity of the situation.  Rather than being horrified upon discovering what has transpired between them (or to her), Betty praises Lewis’s lovemaking skills.  Never mind that as this is going on his brothers are doing brisk business at a booth selling whipped cream pies on plates bearing a topless photograph of her.  Incredibly, Betty tosses aside her brawny lad for some geek love in the end.  REVENGE OF THE NERDS laughs off these shenanigans as boys just being boys, but it’s far too creepy to be considered amusing in the least.

Setting aside the unsavory elements, REVENGE OF THE NERDS is dumb entertainment executed in mediocre fashion.  Rather than getting familiar with the seven nerd protagonists, none of whom are drawn beyond caricatures, the narrative keeps an intense focus on the predestined outcome in the competition between Alphas and Lambdas.  The lone bright spot in their battle for control of the Greek Council features the nerds offering a rare display of ingenuity as they impress with their musical talents. The rest of the time it’s a series of tame, thinly conceived gags.  The belching contest, seemingly a centerpoint for a film like this, is comprised of two combatants letting it rip once each.  How far mainstream Hollywood movies have come since 1984.

Grade: C-

(Side note:  Although not of any consequence to the film, keep an eye out for John Goodman, in one of his first movie roles, as the football coach and James Cromwell, billed as Jamie, as Lewis’s equally nerdy dad.)

The NeverEnding Story

THE NEVERENDING STORY (Wolfgang Petersen, 1984)

Still grieving the recent death of his mother and suffering at the hands of school bullies, young Bastian (Barret Oliver) is having a hard time in THE NEVERENDING STORY. His father’s advice is to get his head out of the clouds and buck up. It’s time to move on. No good can come from dwelling on the pain.

Such advice may sound all well and good, but for a kid who feels alone, these consoling words are neither comforting nor helpful. So Bastian retreats into books, which affords him the ability to escape his everyday worries and experience adventures from a safe distance.

One day while hiding from his three harassing classmates Bastian encounters a man in a book shop who is reading something he deems too dangerous for the boy. Like any child who has something forbidden dangled in front of him, Bastian can’t resist wanting to know what such a book might contain. He borrows it when the bookseller steps away for a few moments. Instead of going to class and facing his tormentors again, Bastian slips off to the school’s attic, a dusty old place that looks more like a medieval sorcerer’s quarters than an academic storage area.

Bastian curls up with the book, THE NEVERENDING STORY, and begins reading about Fantasia, a land which is being slowly overtaken by The Nothing. After this darkness in the form of encroaching storm clouds arrives, where once there was something, now there isn’t anything. The Childlike Empress (Tami Stronach) knows how to combat the malevolent force but is unable to resist it because she is dying. Enter the child warrior Atreyu (Noah Hathaway), who is summoned and sent on a quest to find a cure for the Empress before The Nothing destroys everything.

As a testament to the power of books, the often gloomy THE NEVERENDING STORY comes off as a READING RAINBOW episode covering existentialism. This is heavy stuff for an epic children’s fantasy, even if it’s leavened by Henson-esque creatures. The inhabitants of Fantasia and a mourning Bastian aren’t trying to ward off tangible villains but are dealing with the eternal struggle against despair.

Whether it’s the production’s German roots showing or the prevailing children’s psychology of the time, THE NEVERENDING STORY confronts angst head on instead of offering any coddling or easy reassurance. The directness empowers the tale’s frightened heroes because courage is defined as the ability to stand up to one’s fears and author solutions in the continuous battle with mortal concerns. Reading is not a passive activity for Bastian but an active engagement that permits safer interaction with individual and collective anxieties. In a bit of meta exercise, it is suggested that those of us viewing are similarly employing the imagination through THE NEVERENDING STORY to keep at bay or conquer fundamental doubts and uneasiness.

At the helm of his first English-language film, director Wolfgang Petersen treats the kid-oriented material seriously to overall benefit and detriment. THE NEVERENDING STORY doesn’t condescend to young viewers. In so doing it provides them with plenty to mull over while taking in the stranger delights akin to ALICE IN WONDERLAND by way of THE DARK CRYSTAL. The lighthearted moments and playful exchanges, such as a Rockbiter extolling the vintages of particular stones he’s chowing down on and an ancient turtle ambivalent about impending doom, hint at a less stern composition, but mostly the playfulness juts out awkwardly in a film whose personality prefers affection at arm’s length.

THE NEVERENDING STORY’s virtues derive in part from its weirdness and uncompromising tone. Much of children’s entertainment instructs about self-actualization, but rarely is the message realized in a manner as respectful of its young audience’s intelligence.

Grade: B-