Ghost
Sometimes, a film can come out that can not only literally make the careers of its three stars, but also take what should have been (and in some ways still is) an incredibly dreary premise and find a way to make it such light entertainment that it becomes a worldwide box office phenomenon and (during this time period) even earn a Best Picture Oscar Nomination based solely upon it being the highest grossing film of that year (1990). As for the three stars, Patrick Swayze would solidify his leading man status that many might have considered to be a fluke after Dirty Dancing, Demi Moore would quickly ascend to the A list and become the highest paid actress in Hollywood at that time shortly after and Whoopi Goldberg would snag a (deserved) Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and stay in the Hollywood spotlight all the way through to her horrific run on The View. Throw in former Airplane director / ZAZ member Jerry Zucker taking on the reins as director and two more quality actors in Tony Goldwyn and Rick Aviles as the villains (plus several smaller character roles by others) and you have a mix for some light summer fare with a touch of melancholy. Swayze and Moore play a happy, upscale couple saddled with an annoying BFF (Goldwyn) who doesn’t seem to have his own girlfriend but still appears to be pretty attached to the happy couple quite a bit. When Swayze finds out about money being laundered from the bank that he works at, his best buddy Goldwyn (in truth the guilty party whose laundering is being used to pay off drug dealers) hires a street dealer thug friend of his (Aviles) to accost, mug and ultimately shoot Swayze dead right in front of Moore (who sees Aviles’ face during the fracas but in the movie’s biggest plot hole when she learns that Aviles’ name is Willy Lopez and goes to the police about it she’s not even allowed to see a mugshot of Aviles to make a positive ID and instead has to put up with a cop who has decided to be a smartass to her). So now Swayze is DEAD and refusing to acknowledge the white lights beckoning him to Heaven, choosing instead to stay by Moore’s side and haunt her even though she can’t even see him. When Aviles suddenly comes sniffing around the apartment looking for clues and Swayze’s passcodes from work, Swayze tails him back to his place and observes him before finally stumbling into Goldberg’s fortune teller business, in truth a scam operation where Whoopi purposely tries acting mysterious and powerful for paid suckers when actually it’s all just pretend, until Swayze’s ghost starts verbally making fun of her and she suddenly realizes that she can hear him, leading to the movie’s central conceit, that this is really a comedic teamup between Swayze and Goldberg using the idea that Swayze as an invisible ghost is instructing Goldberg on what to do next with Goldberg playing off of that and reacting with hilarious results. As for Moore, her primary function here is to act sad and forlorn even as Goldwyn comes calling on her looking to move in on his dead buddy’s girl. In the meantime, the film only briefly touches on its most interesting idea, that of how all the ghosts roaming the Earth can talk and interact with each other and possibly even form a quasi-community all while in and around the world of the living, none embodied moreso than with Vincent Schiavelli’s Subway Ghost, a truly tortured soul who nonetheless possesses the ability to move physical matter, something which he at least explains to Swayze well enough so that Swayze can now act as an invisible avenger against both Aviles and Goldwyn (with Aviles doing a great job of being spooked out by what’s happening to him and Goldwyn upon realizing that his launder money has been hacked out of the system looking more and more like he’s in need of escaping to a safe place). Matter of fact, Swayze is even able to beat the shit out of the bad guys and nudge them into their own deaths, which results in the emergence of shadow creatures (which are either scary or utterly ridiculous depending on your own point of view) who grab up the newly dead bad person and drag them kicking, screaming and crying on their way down to Hell (which basically would mean that only good ghosts can have the option to wander the Earth since the shadow creatures wouldn’t take no for an answer from the bad ones). None of this should ever be mistaken for the Judeo Christian definition for life and death into the next world, and indeed the motivation for wanting to hang around and watch over loved ones instead of scampering off to Heaven is a strong one, but the comic chemistry between Swayze and Goldberg is the real selling point above all else here, a spot on teaming that saw Whoopi get an Oscar and helped relieve this movie from possibly being so depressing that it would be nearly unwatchable…
8/10