Why would Costco still sell Blu-rays? Hasn’t the market moved-on already? Up until last year they would also have the TV box-sets around Christmas time but I suppose they figured that dried-up when they didn’t sell A SINGLE M*A*S*H COMPLETE SERIES SET. My nearest Warehouse had an entire table one year dedicated to just the M*A*S*H, X-Files, and Bond box-sets they were struggling to off-load. And then there was nothing; nada except for the newest releases. There is something tangible about holding something you’ve purchased in your hand: reading the blurb at the back; maybe there’s a paper-insert inside with a special offer or some trivia. I’ve had my share of DVD limited-edition sets and Laserdisc sets and sometimes it’s the only way to see a certain version of a film that you want, and other times you just want the pretty packaging. The benefit to the vinyl format of Laserdiscs are that sometimes with a two-disc set you get a nice gatefold with some pictures and text: sometimes it’s just the Chapter Listing, and other times – like with Criterion sets – it would be an essay. Ghost has neither.
At least they tried? Nope, it’s just some screenshots from the movie: not even behind-the-scenes stuff. It could have been worse: there are two-disc sets that cram both discs into one sleeve. And here you get, pretty much what amounts to the “highlights” of the film: the sexy pottery-making that originally put the movie in the collective consciousness; Swayze’s first “realization” that he’s dead; and Whoopi and Demi watching Swayze’s body ascend at the end of the film. FAIR ENOUGH.
Let’s talk about Patrick Swayze. What a guy. He was last-generation’s Heath Ledger. He made a bunch of movies that the middle-aged remember fondly from particular points in their lives, and I’m talking, LIFE-DEFINING MOVIES for certain people: Dirty Dancing; Point Break; Donnie Darko… Road House was always my favorite, and his performance in Ghost is as commanding as his Dalton. He’s joined with two other actresses with their own unique filmographies: Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg. Demi is the dark-haired Sharon Stone (Michael Douglas got to “simulate sex” with both of them!) and even though she’s been tabloid-fodder recently she looks great and is a fantastic actress. Whoopi was up against some tough Oscar competition, but it’s hard to deny that she does her career-best work in Ghost. Everybody does: they’re all in. No phoned-in performances here, folks. Just watch Swayze’s acting during his big “resurrection”. Or anytime Demi’s doubt about Whoopi’s power to hear her dead boyfriend is quashed. The three leads are joined by a random selection of character actors including a Stephen Root cameo when he was younger-and-thinner, and Tony Goldwyn as Swayze’s slimy co-worker-slash-ex-BFF-slash-murderer. Swayze and Goldwyn (playing Sam and Carl, respectively) are bankers and when Sam catches on to Carl’s embezzling ways, Carl has him contract-killed by a street bum. But Sam chooses not to cross over to the other side, and instead sticks around as a ghost to help Demi avoid Carl’s creepy advances and to work with Whoopi to uncover his dastardly scheme and bring him to justice! This came out the same year as Pretty Woman so it isn’t very coincidental that both movies have their own smarmy best-friend character who ends up becoming the villain.
So the acting is great. But what kind of movie IS Ghost, exactly? That is hard to pin down. It starts as a romantic-comedy (and this is what it’s chiefly advertised as) and then becomes a sort-of transcendental-horror movie? But then it’s a bank-heist-movie in the climax (and a most incompetent heist, at that) and a slasher-movie at the end? And all the time it’s a drama about loss and accepting death, but anytime Whoopi is on-screen there is a guaranteed laugh-out-loud moment? It has a BROAD appeal in the way James Cameron could only hope for domestically. And it’s PG-13, so everybody could go as a family and get something out of it: some action for the boys; some lovey-dovey for the girls; a few surprises (having Whoopi play a con-artist who pretends to have the Gift, only to realize that she actually had the Gift the whole time, was a refreshing twist); and everything is tied up with a nice bow at the end. No, Swayze doesn’t come back to life: but everyone gets their own catharsis about what they have been through and go their separate ways in that Hollywood way that movies hardly do anymore. It has some batshit crazy ideas, such as Swayze going through “Ghost Training” with a sewer-dwelling ghost-Yoda and being able to see everyone’s guts when the ghosts walk through them, but these add to the charm of what was otherwise a very-watchable and entertaining film. A film with EXCELLENT special effects, by the way: some of which looked practical-and-composited but I could be wrong. The only thing that dated it was the technology: their ASCII banking system would NOT run as fast as it does on a 56k modem. It just wouldn’t. I should be keeping track of how many times this happens (3, now).
So you would think that’s the end, but no. Ghost was not content with simply letting me enjoy the film of its own accord. No, it made me ask questions. Because Ghost is not simply a movie but a HARDCORE PROCEDURAL on screenwriter Bruce Rubin’s beliefs on “The Rules of Being a Ghost” (the same guy wrote Brainstorm and Jacob’s Ladder, so you can’t say the thought wasn’t on his mind). There are so many details the film has about the idea of being a “modern ghost” in the “real world” (such as the aforementioned-sight of guts), and the more detail there is, the more your film needs to stand up to scrutiny. Here are some questions it made me ask: if ghosts can move through walls, then how can they stand on floors? I know you could make the argument that it’s “God’s earth” but then how do you stay standing on higher, man-made ground like the multiple-floors of a high rise? How can he sit in a car, or ride the subway? As soon as he learned how to “interact” with the real world, why didn’t Sam immediately go occupy Carl’s body and, say, throw him out of a tall window? Was he just scared of the height? Was it because he was still getting used to his powers? He was already dead-and-buried by the time he found out about Carl’s plan so what did he do the whole time? Grieve with his wife? He NEVER tried jumping around and just, enjoy being a ghost? And just who was that ghost sensei that Swayze trained with? He obviously wasn’t a bad guy because he didn’t get pulled down to the “Bad Place” (because from my understanding, if you’re good you have a choice to stay or go, but if you’re bad then you HAVE to go) but was he, literally just a mentally-unstable public transport patron? Did he choose not to cross over because it was “his train”? If Sam had the second chance to cross over after he solved the mystery of his death, what does ghost-Yoda have to do to get his second-chance? OR was he just the film’s interpretation of a “lost soul”? And on a final, non-ghost-related topic, why couldn’t I get at least one money shot of Whoopi playing Swayze when she let him occupy her? WHOOPI GOLDBERG’S OSCAR-WINNING PORTRAYAL OF PATRICK SWAYZE, but they replace her with him at the last minute for the feels. Can’t have everything.
//jf 3.7.20
theory of a daskeman 