Ivan Reitman’s enjoyably silly (and occasionally genuinely scary) supernatural blockbuster about a team of amateurish ectoplasmic exorcists rescuing New York from a plague of ghouls was the most expensive comedy of its time.

| Dec 27, 2023

Ghostbusters is like romping through Disneyland's haunted house with Bill Murray.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 8, 2016

Ghostbusters is primarily a showcase for Murray, who slinks through the movie muttering his lines in his usual cheeky fashion and getting off an occasionally hilarious crack that proves he's thoroughly enjoying himself.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 16, 2015

The plotting may be primitive, but it's all carried off with far more style and finesse than one might expect from the creators of Animal House and Meatballs.

| Jun 16, 2015

Part of the sheer joy of this movie -- aside from the comic timing of Bill Murray -- is the cartoonish crapness of its apparitions and their placid acceptance by the Ghostbusters team.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 31, 2014

On balance, Ghostbusters is a hoot. It's Murray's picture, and in a triumph of mind over matter, he blows away the film's boring special effects with his one-liners.

| Aug 19, 2014

A fantasy, but with no touches of reality at all, to be enjoyed for its zany humour typical of the "National Lampoon" school from which several of its contributors are drawn.

| Jun 12, 2014

Director Ivan Reitman keeps the Aykroyd-Ramis screenplay zipping right along, creating something like Abbott & Costello Meet the Exorcist. Aykroyd and Murray make the perfect summer tonic for raising spirits.

Full Review | Jul 29, 2013

It provoked huge box-office success in 1984 and is still director Ivan Reitman's defining movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 31, 2011

What's not to like?

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 27, 2011

The movie's tongue-in-cheek (and pre-subprime) satire of surging capitalist hubris is scarcely mitigated by the necessary fairy-tale ending.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 5, 2009

Whoever thought of having evil's final manifestation take the form of a 100-ft. marshmallow deserves the rational mind's eternal gratitude.

| Oct 5, 2008

Only intermittently impressive.

| May 30, 2007

Essentially a $30 million version of Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy but not at all a bad time, thanks mainly to Bill Murray's incredibly dry line readings and director Ivan Reitman's maintenance of a moderately coherent tone and plotline.

| May 30, 2007

Thirty years on, bustin' still makes us feel good. In fact, few movies have the power to make us feel good-er.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 24, 2006

This movie is an exception to the general rule that big special effects can wreck a comedy.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 23, 2004

There is more attention to special effects than to humor.

| May 20, 2003

As entertaining today as it ever was, a classic to be treasured by all.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

The comedy here is solid gold, Bill Murray is in peak form, and the effects are a lot of fun.

| Jan 1, 2000