00:00 Ghostbusters.
00:01 Hey, anybody see a ghost?
00:03 They catch the ghost that won't stay dead.
00:05 So every now and then on the podcast, we like to take a look at what some people consider to be
00:11 a classic film and try and figure out why it's a classic and if it's deserving of that status.
00:16 So I chose Ghostbusters from 1984 because I'd actually never seen it before, but it's so
00:22 embedded in pop culture and in the zeitgeist that I thought, oh,
00:26 this is one that I really do have to take a look at.
00:28 So Josh, tell us a bit about the critical reception.
00:31 At the time of recording on IMDb, it gets 7.8 out of 10.
00:35 The audience give it 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and the critics give it a whopping 95% on
00:42 Rotten Tomatoes, which averages out at 87 or 8.7 out of 10.
00:47 So pretty high scores then.
00:50 So I had seen it before, but you hadn't.
00:52 So what did you like about it?
00:53 So I think aesthetically, this film was really impressive in terms of
00:58 some of the visual effects, which I thought were really advanced for the time and actually
01:02 quite striking.
01:03 They were really bold and colourful and quite fun a lot of the times as well.
01:07 And things like some of the props and the set design and the costume,
01:10 it all felt really iconic and familiar, even though I hadn't seen the film.
01:14 But I definitely feel like I've seen it riffed on in other films or TV programmes.
01:18 And I think it's aged pretty well.
01:20 Some bits better than others, but like you say, it still looks pretty good.
01:23 It's really funny.
01:24 I think the four of them work together.
01:25 The four Ghostbusters work together really well.
01:27 They all bring something a little bit different to it.
01:30 It's really well paced.
01:31 It's a really good exercise in things like show, don't tell.
01:34 So they don't go into it too much, you know, where the ghosts came from or what happened,
01:38 or whatever.
01:39 They're just there.
01:40 You know, it's such a well-loved film.
01:41 It's one of the most well-loved films we've done then.
01:43 So no pressure.
01:44 But is there anything you didn't like about Ghostbusters?
01:47 There's only one thing, sadly, but it is quite a big thing.
01:51 And that's about an hour in, I lost interest.
01:54 And I just found that I didn't really care about the characters.
01:57 I didn't really care about the story.
01:59 I don't think there was enough going on in there to really hold my attention and to keep
02:04 me engaged or to have me really invested in the story.
02:08 And I think, like we said on the episode, and you gave a really good assessment of this,
02:12 you sort of had to watch it at the time, I think, or at least be in a certain age bracket
02:17 to really get the full effect of the film.
02:19 I reckon if I'd have seen this for the first time when I was, say, 13 or 14 years old,
02:24 I would have absolutely loved it.
02:26 So I sort of came away from it thinking, what is the big deal?
02:29 I do really like it.
02:31 Do you think it deserves to be a classic?
02:33 I can certainly see why people love this film, but I just do not feel the same way.
02:40 I think it's undoubtedly a classic in the way that the iconography from it, some of
02:44 the characters, the song, some of the quotes, have really reverberated through the decades
02:49 and are still prominent today in pop culture.
02:51 So in that regard, I don't think you can dispute it.
02:54 But for me, it just didn't quite strike that chord with me.
02:58 So I would say I'm unsure as to whether I really think this should be a classic.
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