Movie Log: Ghostbusters, Fast Times at Ridgemont High

World Fantasy is stealing nearly all of my "free" time these days, so I don't have the opportunity to give my whole attention to a movie. Instead, I've been watching comedies that I haven't seen in ages while I fold laundry, check blog updates, and other minor things that only need half a brain. These were the ones I saw last week, on Wednesday and Friday.

I'd thought vaguely about getting Ghostbusters to watch with the boys, but thought I should see it myself again first, and that was a good thing. It's rated PG, but that's an early-80s PG, which bears little resemblance to the rating today. There's more sex and innuendo than you could probably get away with in a PG-13 movie these days, and a little bit of cursing, too. So I'm not going to be watching it with them any time soon. I had half-forgotten how quotable this movie is, as well -- not just the famous lines about crossing the streams, sleeping above the covers, or telling someone you're a god, but nearly all of Bill Murray's lines and a lot of the rest of the script. It's just one of the great loose, shaggy comedies, and everyone in it is perfectly cast and plays their parts just right.

Fast Times is another movie with piles of people perfectly cast, though it has much less plot than Ghostbusters. It's a massively nostalgic movie for me, since it came out just before I went into high school myself, and so defined a lot of my expectations and ideals for that part of my life (though, of course, no one's life is ever much like the movie-fed preconceptions). Again, it's a movie I can't see anyone making now -- it's about loose sex, abortions, drugs and masturbation, and there's hardly an "adult" in it, let alone a role model. But I'm glad I grew up at a time when it could still be made.