Big-budget special effects and comedy are cleverly interwoven in this fantasy adventure written by two of the movie’s stars, Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd. With Bill Murray they play a trio of paranormal “experts”—in reality, they are lazy, wisecracking ex-science professors, kicked off campus for their antics—who set up a ghost-busting business from an abandoned New York City firehouse. Their timing couldn’t be better as the city is suddenly bursting with paranormal activity causing ghostly apparitions to run riot, terrorizing visitors to the library, ransacking an upscale hotel, and even taking up residence in a skeptical Sigourney Weaver’s refrigerator.
Although Ramis (the serious, scientific nerd of the group), and Aykroyd (the bumbling dimwit), along with costars Weaver and Rick Moranis (as the “Key Master”), all have superb comic timing here, it is Murray’s Dr. Peter Venkman, with his character’s sleazy charm and cockiness, who steals every scene In Ghostbusters. And that is an impressive achievement indeed when you consider that his special effects costars include a gigantic, stampeding marshmallow man intent on reducing Manhattan to a pile of sugary rubble that would steal the movie away from a less skilled comic talent. —Joanna Berry (1001)

Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis wrote the script, but Bill Murray gets all the best lines and moments in this 1984 comedy directed by Ivan Reitman ("Meatballs"). The three comics, plus Ernie Hudson, play the New York City-based team that provides supernatural pest control, and Sigourney Weaver is the love interest possessed by an ancient demon. Reitman and company are full of original ideas about hobgoblins—who knew they could "slime" people with green plasma goo?—but hovering above the plot is Murray's patented ironic view of all the action. Still a lot of fun, and an obvious model for sci-fi comedies such as "Men in Black". "—Tom Keogh"