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In 1984, a film about blue-collar entrepreneurs fighting a war against government bureaucracy — and an omnipotent eldritch god — solidified Ivan Reitman’s cinematic legacy.
If there’s one film that Reitman, who died Saturday at the age of 75, will probably be remembered for, it’s “Ghostbusters” — the blockbuster adventures of four misfits that blurred the lines between broad comedy, monstrous horror and working-class heroism.
But while “Ghostbusters” may have been Reitman’s biggest financial success, it’s that particular blurring of the lines that was the filmmaker’s lifelong calling card. Reitman repeatedly told stories that precariously but impeccably elevated the humor and heart in practically every genre.
The son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants (his mother an Auschwitz survivor and his father a World War II freedom fighter), Reitman grew up in Canada and studied music in college, gradually working his way into producing low-budget independent films. Reitman directed the comedies “Foxy Lady” (1971) and — with a couple of up-and-comers named Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin in the cast — “Cannibal Girls” (1973). He also produced David Cronenberg’s first two groundbreaking horror features, the parasite thriller “Shivers” and the vampiric “Rabid,” the latter starring famous adult superstar Marilyn Chambers.
Reitman produced several grindhouse thrillers in the 1970s — including the disturbingly violent “The House by the Lake” (1976) and, under a pseudonym, the notorious “Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia” (1977) — before collaborating with director John Landis and co-writer Harold Ramis on a film that would change all of their careers. “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978) was a sleazy, wacky, boorish and anarchic college comedy about heroic, over-sexed loser frat boys waging a culture war against snooty, hateful, corrupt and wealthy frat boys.
Although much of the film’s comedy plays rough today, the film helped solidify a new comedic movement dedicated to celebrating working-class slobs as they undermined stuffy social structures and humiliated stuck-up elites. “Animal House” spawned a legion of imitators, and Reitman himself would direct several films within the movement, including the Bill Murray breakout comedy “Meatballs” (1979), a film that helped popularize the summer-camp-comedy sub-genre. The original “Meatballs” led to increasingly outlandish sequels and prurient knockoffs, but Reitman’s original remains grounded in realistic characters and an earnest mentor-student relationship between Murray and a young Chris Makepeace.
Reitman, Murray and Ramis re-teamed for the 1981 military comedy “Stripes,” which once again cast Murray (opposite Ramis) as a typical guy who defies authority and emerges the hero. It’s a format that would serve them well again in “Ghostbusters,” a major step forward for Reitman as a director. He found a way to use his laid-back and realistic approach to character to ground the film’s far-out supernatural content. The film’s genuinely freaky monster effects, from gigantic demon dogs to ethereal shape-shifting specters, allowed “Ghostbusters” to be taken seriously as a fantasy adventure and a horror movie, even while Murray, Ramis, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson got splattered with marshmallow fluff.
Reitman spent most of his career producing hit comedies (“Beethoven,” “Space Jam”), genre oddities (“Heavy Metal,” “Space Hunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone”) and a few noteworthy box-office duds (“Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot”). Meanwhile, his directing career flourished. The courtroom comedy “Legal Eagles” (1986), starring Robert Redford, Deborah Winger and Darryl Hannah, was a smash success, and “Dave” (1993), featuring Kevin Kline as a presidential impersonator who winds up actually doing the president’s job, is one of the few Capra-esque comedies that are as good — and as beloved — as the films of Frank Capra himself.
The late 1980s and early 1990s also found Reitman transforming Arnold Schwarzenegger, the famed bodybuilder and increasingly popular action movie star, into a successful comedian. Reitman’s blockbuster comedy “Twins” (1988) cleverly cast Schwarzenegger opposite Danny DeVito, whose onscreen persona could only be described as “diametrically opposed” to his co-star, and mined the contrast for whimsical gold. The filmmaker then cast Schwarzenegger as a tough-as-nails cop who gets psychologically torn to shreds by children in the hit comedy “Kindergarten Cop” (1990), which deftly balances absurd humor with genuine suspense.
Reitman’s directorial career would have ups and downs in the 1990s and 2000s, with films like the Schwarzenegger-DeVito reunion “Junior” (1994), the Robin Williams-Billy Crystal comedy remake “Father’s Day” (1997), the Harrison Ford-Anne Heche romantic bickerfest “Six Days, Seven Nights” (1998), and the sci-fi adventure “Evolution” (2001) underperforming or simply flopping. Nobody’s perfect, but some of those films — particularly “Six Days, Seven Nights” and “Evolution” — are starting to develop some cult appreciation.
Reitman’s final three films behind the camera were the ahead-of-its-time superhero comedy “My Super Ex-Girlfriend” (2006), the sexually adventurous Natalie Portman-Ashton Kutcher rom-com “No Strings Attached” and the Kevin Costner sports dramedy “Draft Day” (2014), which over time has gathered a reputation as a fine football film, and may ultimately be one of Reitman’s very best pictures.
In the last few decades, Reitman continued producing, from respectable biopics like “Hitchcock” (2012) to comedy duds like “Baywatch” (2017). He earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture for producing his son Jason’s acclaimed 2009 dramedy “Up in the Air,” and reteamed with him for “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” in 2021. That film perhaps works less as a follow-up and more as an homage to Ivan Reitman and Harold Ramis’ legacy, but with the elder Reitman’s passing, perhaps nothing could be more appropriate.
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