Ghostbusters (Blu-ray) (1984)

Premiere
"GHOSTBUSTERS is still a rounded, rousing entertainment." 12/01/2004 p.168

Entertainment Weekly
"What turned GHOSTBUSTERS into a classic was director Ivan Reitman's ability to stir genuine ghoulish scares into the clever dialogue and funny bits." 08/05/2005 p.52

Premiere
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "An 80s phenomenon and classic comedy, with Bill Murray upstaging everything in his path..." 06/17/2009

Anthony'sFilmReview.com 9 of 10
Ghostbusters succeeds in being a movie with scary ghosts and monsters that barely frightens the audience. It's not intended to be a horror movie. That's a good thing, because a serious dark movie about professors turned ghost exterminators would not work as well. For one thing, the idea of these characters might not be taken as seriously in such a genre. Hence, Ghostbusters attempts to be a comedy, one that is funny but not over the top...If you ask me, I don't really consider this movie a comedy. I didn't laugh much but only because I didn't want to. I was much more engaged in the plot premise. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) are university professors specializing in the paranormal. They are asked to investigate unusual activity in a library. At the same time, they are fired from campus for running a controversial academic department. It doesn't seem to shock them. Maybe they were expecting this to happen. In any event, they decide to start a business of removing ghosts wherever they are spotted...I do like how it's about a group of heroes without showing them as tough men from the start. We see the gradual process of starting from the bottom. Now, because the film is a so-called comedy, the four Ghostbusters never act macho at any point. Even in the face of the most dire situations, they are still making wisecracks here and there. Of course, the humor is still subtle compared to the amount I consider to be necessary for a true comedy. I would say that Ghostbusters maintains 20% humor and 80% sci-fi all the way through...Whether you call it sci-fi, action, comedy, or any combination of these, Ghostbusters is just good fun. That's all it is. You will likely find one of these elements to engage you and let you enjoy the ride. To top it off, the soundtrack delivers some upbeat music, especially the title song by Ray Parker, Jr. that I still like to hear from time to time. If you want a film with some campy fun, who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters.
 
Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
"Ghostbusters" is a head-on collision between two comic approaches that have rarely worked together very successfully. This time, they do. It's (1) a special-effects blockbuster, and (2) a sly dialogue movie, in which everybody talks to each other like smart graduate students who are in on the joke. In the movie's climactic scenes, an apocalyptic psychic mindquake is rocking Manhattan, and the experts talk like Bob and Ray...The plot, such as it is, involves an epidemic of psychic nuisance reports in Manhattan. Murray, Ramis, and Aykroyd, defrocked parapsychologists whose university experiments have been exposed as pure boondoggle, create a company named Ghostbusters and offer to speed to the rescue like a supernatural version of the Orkin man. Business is bad until Sigourney Weaver notices that the eggs in her kitchen are frying themselves. Her next-door neighbor, Rick Moranis, notices horrifying monsters in the apartment hallways. They both apparently live in a building that serves as a conduit to the next world. The ghostbusters ride to the rescue, armed with nuclear-powered backpacks. There is a lot of talk about arcane details of psychic lore (most of which the ghostbusters are inventing on the spot), and then an earthshaking showdown between good and evil, during which Manhattan is menaced by a monster that is twenty stories high, and about which I cannot say one more word without spoiling the movie's best visual moment..."Ghostbusters" is one of those rare movies where the original, fragile comic vision has survived a multimillion-dollar production. It is not a complete vindication for big-budget comedies, since it's still true, as a general rule, that the more you spend, the fewer laughs you get. But it uses its money wisely, and when that, ahem, monster marches down a Manhattan avenue and climbs the side of a skyscraper ... we're glad they spent the money for the special effects because it gets one of the biggest laughs in a long time. - Roger Ebert