Ghostbusters in Concert, Royal Albert Hall Review
Reviewed by Franco Milazzo for Theatre and Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
If you’re looking for the ultimate Ghostbusters experience, who you gonna call? The Royal Albert Hall continues its Film In Concert series with Ivan Reitman’s spooky classic. The comedy about a team of parapsychologists fighting against ghouls and demons is now 40 years old but still something of a cultural phenomenon with Elmer Bernstein’s score and Ray Parker Jr’s earworm of a song at the very heart of its appeal.
This special series of events at the immense West London venue has featured many well known cinematic masterpieces and future showings include Gladiator, Home Alone and Back To The Future. It often goes above and beyond expectations: for Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise made a personal appearance and spoke to the audience about the importance of musical leitmotifs in cinema. There are no Hollywood stars in person for Ghostbusters but more than enough to satisfy hardcore fans. Outside the hall, a replica of the vehicle ECTO-1 is parked with actors available for selfies alongside it while indoors there are models of Slimer and the Library Ghost.
Just before the screening starts, Dan Ackroyd is shown on a special PSA warning about a recent event where “a foul smelling, amorphous, intelligently directed green vapour posing as a music critic slimed both audience and the orchestra during an afternoon performance of Prokofiev’s Peter And The Wolf” and how the Ghostbusters have been called into action to help save orchestras worldwide. Reitman’s son Jason (director of recent sequel Ghostbusters: Afterlife) also welcomes the audience in a pre-recorded message. Another famous son, Peter Bernstein takes to the stage to conduct the the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra after talking about why his father decided to work with Reitman on this film.
Remarkably, the music has fared better over the years than the movie itself. The script co-written by Ackroyd and co-star Harold Ramis has no shortage of memorable zingers but also has some wince-worthy moments especially around Bill Murray’s Dr Peter Venkman’s sexist rhetoric and his shameless attempts to woo Sigourney Weaver’s Dana Barrett. Reitman’s direction is remarkably taut with barely any letup in the pace but the video effects look particularly dated in the final scenes with Gozer atop the New York skyscraper.
The theme song from Ray Parker Jr, an iconic slice of Eighties pop and a favourite of that era’s wedding receptions up and down the land, is a bouncy number with its own infamous history. It went to the top of the US charts but in the UK was stuck at number 2 behind Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called To Say I Love You”. Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham and Huey Lewis and The News both turned down the opportunity to write the theme song before Parker was approached. He was only given a few days and, apparently inspired by a late night commercial, he came up with the hit number. A later lawsuit settled out of court alleged that Parker had plagiarised Huey Lewis and the News’ “I Want A New Drug” which had been used by the Ghostbusters filmmakers as temporary background music and was on footage given to Parker for inspiration. One estimate suggests the song’s success added $20m to the film’s eventual gross.
Bernstein’s score is arguably the highlight of this film showing. Its sprightly tones are often in contrast to the blistering action scenes or darker moments as Barrett and her neighbour accountant Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) are possessed by a Sumerian demon.Hearing it played live by an orchestra adds levels of depth and emotion that enhance and lift the more emotional scenes. Another supreme entry in the Royal Albert Hall’s Film In Concert series, Ghostbusters fully deserves this resurrection.
★★★★
