Ghost (Blu-ray)

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So far, it's interesting but not exactly attention grabbing in the manner of a mega hit. Then Whoopi enters as Oda Mae Brown, a semi-phony spiritualist, and she steals the show. Since Sam can see the living but can't communicate with them, he goes to Oda Mae for help. She's not exactly into the real thing so she freaks when he starts talking to her, and she can actually hear him! Sam persuades her to help him by threatening to sing "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am" until she gives in. She finally agrees, for Sam's good and Molly's (and the good of the plot). Without Whoopi, I'm afraid the whole show might have closed early. Of course, people may quibble about the Academy awarding her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the role, given that it's awfully lightweight, but it's always nice to see what is essentially a comedy performance take top honors once in a while over the serious dramatic performances that usually win.

Consequently, the film relies heavily on Goldberg for laughs, Swayze and Moore for romance, a particularly scabrous ruffian (Rick Aviles) for thrills, and relatively modest special effects for the in-between times. The filmmakers created many of the special effects digitally but before the advent of really high-tech computer graphics. Nonetheless, they come off well enough, with Sam realistically passing through walls and even through other people. I especially liked the demons that come to take the evil dead away, shades who materialize from the darkest shadows. Their actual physical appearance is sort of silly, but the eerie moans and cries of lost souls that accompany them are effectively scary. The musical score provided by old hand Maurice Jarre ("Lawrence of Arabia," "Doctor Zhivago," "Ryan's Daughter") helps a lot, too, in conveying the moods of wonder, excitement, terror, and passion.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded "Ghost" two Oscars: Best Writing (Bruce Joel Rubin) and the aforementioned Best Supporting Actress (Whoopi Goldberg). What's more, they nominated it for three other Oscars: Best Picture (Lisa Weinstein), Best Film Editing (Walter Murch), and Best Music (Maurice Jarre).

The fact is, Moore was never sweeter or prettier, Swayze was never more handsome or more appealing, and Whoopi was never cuter or funnier. "Ghost" holds up nicely after all these years, as most good movies do.

Video:
Paramount use a dual-layer BD50 and an MPEG-4/AVC codec to transfer the 1.85:1 ratio picture to Blu-ray. The image retains much of the dark, gritty appearance of the original print, with flesh tones somewhat purplish. Perhaps this was Zucker's intention in order to give more atmosphere to the story line. The screen is not entirely clear, though, as evidenced by a small degree of noise and grain in wide expanses of white, black, and blue. Object delineation and inner detailing are only so-so, and when I first started watching this high-def movie, I wasn't sure it looked any better than upscaled standard definition. So I did a little comparing of the BD and SD versions side by side, and, sure enough, the BD was distinctly better. Oddly, though, I found the BD a tad softer, so perhaps Paramount's engineers applied a little filtering here.

Audio:
The audio comes to us via Dolby TrueHD 5.1, which is an improvement over the regular Dolby Digital found on the standard-def disc. The TrueHD sounds smoother and tighter, with a slightly wider, if still fairly limited, dispersion of surround information. The various scenes where spirits of the underworld enter to drag off their subjects are particularly effective in this regard.

Extras:
For bonuses, we start with an audio commentary by director Jerry Zucker and writer Bruce Joel Rubin, the former providing the humor and the latter the more prosaic details of the movie's production. Next, we get the thirteen-minute featurette "Ghost Story: The Making of a Classic," wherein the writer begins by telling us about his "Hamlet" connection, followed by comments from various of the other filmmakers. After that is the eight-minute featurette "Inside the Paranormal," where several spiritual mediums and psychics give their views on the subject of ghosts. Yet another featurette comes after that, the six-minute "Alchemy of a Love Scene," which concentrates on the making of the pottery scene. Then, there's a twenty-minute bit from "Cinema's Great Romances," a collection of Paramount film clips from the AFI's "100 Years...100 Passions," which includes, naturally, "Ghost." Lastly, there are sixteen scene selections, with bookmarks; a stills gallery; a widescreen theatrical trailer; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Thoughts:
Probably the most affecting scene in the film is one where Sam prevails upon Oda Mae to let him inhabit her body for a few minutes to touch Molly for one last time. It reminded me of the encounter in "Prelude To a Kiss," where a young woman inhabits the body of an old man. In both instances, the scenes of two people remaining in love despite difficult circumstances are poignant, even though in the case of "Ghost" it might have been better if Zucker had stuck to Whoopi and Moore embracing rather than cutting to a shot of the real Sam holding his lover. While the film ends in a typically sentimental Hollywood fashion, you couldn't ask for anything more engaging.

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