Dear Geekfucks,
I understand you. I often deny that I’m one of you, but much like that She-Hulk Kardashian sister who looks she could beat up her entire family if they all came at her at once and yet swears that she’s not blood relations with OJ Simpson, if one looks over my 92,000 reviews, mostly of genre movies, the DNA evidence is clear. If I’m not a full-blood geekfuck, I am at least part geekfuck. Maybe I don’t play video games or argue about the casting in superhero movies or live-tweet my reactions to trailers or wear XXXL T-shirts with the Goonies logo on it, but I have several other geekfuck qualities. Like many geekfucks, I grew up in the 80s, the entirety of which I spent reading comic books and watching movies until my eyeballs became two poached eggs. I get tingly over Robocop, get misty over the original Star Wars trilogy and still kinda want to be Indiana Jones. What I’m trying to say is that I know what it’s like to love silly things, both as a kid and as a pushing-40 adult with male pattern baldness, insurance bills, joint muscles that are starting to ache and a doctor who sticks his fingers up my ass every year.
Most of the time, I understand what the geekfucks are talking about, but there’s one thing that I don’t understand:
WHY ARE SOME OF YOU SO SERIOUS ALL OF A SUDDEN ABOUT GHOSTBUSTERS?
I’m not saying that Ghostbusters isn’t good stuff. I love Ghostbusters. How many times did I watch Ghostbusters when I was a kid? Somewhere around 10,000 times is my guess. I even got hooked on the cartoon way back when. I think the comedy team of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis play off each other as beautifully as any other trio in movie history. The 80s New York City atmosphere is fetching (and shot by the great László Kovács). The special effects (produced by 80s practical effects giant Richard Edlund) remain dazzling today. Even the supporting cast teems with lively characters.
Watching it decades later as an adult, what impresses me most is how it’s shot like a horror movie, complete with straight-faced demons and a world of shadows. Beneath the wisecracks is a spicy sense of foreboding. The end of the world is coming and only these goofballs can stop it.
That said, it’s a movie that never asks to be taken seriously by anybody, least of all by the people who enjoy it. So, relax. Chill out. Laugh, joke and hold nothing about it sacred. Peter Venkman would approve.