Rick Moranis Movies

Ghostbusters
Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson star as a quartet of Manhattan-based "paranormal investigators". When their government grants run out, the former three go into business as The Ghostbusters, later hiring Hudson on. Armed with electronic paraphernalia, the team is spectacularly successful, ridding The Big Apple of dozens of ghoulies, ghosties and long-legged beasties. Tight-lipped bureaucrat William Atherton regards the Ghostbusters as a bunch of charlatans, but is forced to eat his words when New York is besieged by an army of unfriendly spirits, conjured up by a long-dead Babylonian demon and "channelled" through beautiful cellist Sigourney Weaver and nerdish Rick Moranis. The climax is a glorious sendup of every Godzilla movie ever made-and we daresay it cost more than a year's worth of Japanese monster flicks combined. Who'd ever dream that the chubby, cheery Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man would turn out to be the most malevolent threat ever faced by New York City? When the script for Ghostbusters was forged by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, John Belushi was slated to play the Bill Murray role; Belushi's death in 1982 not only necessitated the hiring of Murray, but also an extensive rewrite. The most expensive comedy made up to 1984, Ghostbusters made money hand over fist, spawning not only a 1989 sequel but also two animated TV series (one of them partially based on an earlier live-action TV weekly, titled The Ghost Busters. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ghostbusters 2
Ivan Reitman's sequel to the phenomenally successful Ghostbusters is looser and more self-assured than the original. The film opens with a title reading "Five Years Later" and finds the ghostbusters living in hard times. A restraining order has forbidden the boys to partake in paranormal warfare, and as a result they have had to seek other lines of work. Ray (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston (Ernie Hudson) spend their time performing at children's' birthday parties, and Egon (Harold Ramis) is busy conducting experiments investigating the effect of human emotions on the environment, leaving ghostbusting behind. Venkman (Bill Murray) and Dana (Sigourney Weaver) have split up. Venkman now hosts a local cable show called "The World of the Psychic." Dana, now divorced and the mother of a little baby named Oscar, works as an art restorer in a museum -- and this is where the plot kicks in. While Dana is restoring a portrait of a 16th-century tyrant by the name of Vigo the Carpathian, the portrait becomes hexed. The evil Vigo wants to return to life by taking over the body of Dana's little child. Vigo has enlisted Dana's boss, Janosz Poha (Peter MacNicol), to compel Dana to cooperate. Soon dirty sludge and slime flow through the streets of Manhattan, and the ghostbusters have to reunite to save the city from a funky paranormal evil. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

An outgrowth of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe, which was created in 1959, the Toronto branch of Second City invaded Canada's CBC in the fall of 1976 with a weekly, half-hour sketch comedy series, making up in talent and energy what it lacked in budget and production polish. Taped in Edmondton, Alberta, Second City TV had an angle which its spiritual predecessor, NBC's Saturday Night Live, lacked. Each episode purportedly took place during a typical broadcast day at Channel 109, in the "SCTV Studios"; thus, the satire and spoofery were aimed almost exclusively at popular television of the late '70s, with savage lampoons of vapid variety programs, glitzy game shows, pretentious miniseries, pompous newscasters, cheesy children's shows, and dopey do-it-yourself programs. Each member of the series' brilliant repertory company essayed a variety of roles, some of them recurring, but most of them hilarious one-shots. The cast included Joe Flaherty, often seen in the guise of the studio's shamelessly crooked owner, Guy Caballero; Andrea Martin, whose best-known characterization was obnoxious station manager Edith Prickley, who only got the job by default when her predecessor, Moe Green, was kidnapped; Harold Ramis as that selfsame Moe Green, along with several other characters; Eugene Levy, best known as self-important news anchor Earl Camembert; John Candy, who was usually cast as the station's lazy, overweight physical fitness guru Johnny LaRue; Catherine O'Hara, a specialist at playing such strident, superficial faux celebrities as Lola Heatherton; Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis, best known for their appearances as the beer-guzzling McKenzie Brothers, hosts of "The Great White North" (a sequence contemptuously added to the proceedings when the CBC demanded that Second City TV include three weekly minutes of "exclusively Canadian content"); and in a variety of characterizations, Tony Rosato and Robin Duke. Second City TV was syndicated in the U.S. beginning in the fall of 1977, its exposure initially limited to the NBC-owned stations. After three seasons and 78 episodes produced between 1976 and 1980, the series was picked up by NBC and retooled in an expanded format (including guest stars and musical numbers) as SCTV Network 90. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Expanding from 30 to 90 minutes per week in the process of "graduating" from Canada's Global Television Network to America's NBC, the popular sketch comedy series SCTV also boasts an expanded title -- SCTV: Network 90 -- as it launches its first NBC season. The "new" series' format is primarily the same as the "old" one, with each episode chronicling a typical broadcast day on SCTV's flagship station, Channel 109 in Melonville. Returning from the earlier series are John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, and Rick Moranis; beginning with the 25th episode of season one, Martin Short joins the cast, adding his own unique comedy characterizations to the cast of "regulars" already established by his colleagues.
Among the recurring segments introduced during the shakedown season of SCTV: Network 90 are "Farm Film Report," with bucolic emcees Billy Sol (John Candy) and Jim Bob (Joe Flaherty) exhorting various ersatz celebrities to "blow up reeeal good"; "The Happy Wanderers," featuring Leutonian polka kings Stan and Yosh Schmenge (John Candy, Eugene Levy); "One on the Town," a fatuous investigative reporting series hosted by news anchor Earl Camembert (Levy); "Street Beef," the cheesy man-on-the-street interview show to which SCTV personality Johnny LaRue (Candy) is exiled after the failure of his first starring movie "Polynesiantown"; and "The Gerry Todd Show," a lampoonish music video disc jockey program that predated the debut of MTV by four months! Many of the sketches seen during SCTV: Network 90's first season are reruns, culled from three seasons' worth of the original SCTV (some of these, however, had not previously been seen on U.S. television). Of the new sketches, several are standouts, including "CCCP1," in which the SCTV satellite is hijacked by the Soviet Union; "Zontar," an extended parody of Invasion of the Body Snatchers; "The People's Golden Choice Awards," arguably the single most crooked awards show in TV history; and the hilariously self-explanatory "PBS Battle of the Network Stars." On orders from NBC, SCTV: Network 90 was obliged to accommodate musical guest stars, but for the most part these performers were smoothly integrated into the comic action. This season's crop of guests includes Levon Helm, Dr. John, Natalie Cole, Al Jarreau, The Tubes, Tony Bennett, Talking Heads, Roy Orbison, and even classical violinist Eugene Fodor and Johnny Puleo and His Harmonica Gang. Mention should also be made of non-musical guest Bill Murray, who -- to no one's surprise -- melded beautifully with the series' general zaniness. (DVD alert: Most of the aforementioned guest star turns have been removed from the half-hour syndicated versions of the individual SCTV Network episodes.) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This is the last of three 90-minute NBC specials offering prized vignettes from SCTV's three seasons and the first season of SCTV: Network 90. Highlights include Gregory Peck and Woody Allen's versions of Taxi Driver; the 2-minute adaptation of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf; Doug and Bob McKenzie's discourse on Darth Vader; "Quincy: Cartoon Coroner"; "Lola Heatherton in Concert"; "Death Takes No Holiday"; and "Ingmar Bergman's Whispers of the Wolf." The Best of SCTV (3) originally aired in the time slot generally reserved for Saturday Night Live. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Purporting to be loosely based on Hamlet, Strange Brew is about an evil braumeister at the Elsinore Brewery who has discovered an additive that when guzzled in beer, allows the drinkers to be easily controlled. Braumeister Smith (Max von Sydow) has a plan to take over the world with his new brew, and only the Great White hosers of the North, Bob and Doug McKenzie (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas) -- with their plaid shirts, ski toques, fur-lined parkas, and addiction to beer -- can stop the dastardly plan, sober or not. There are several jabs at "hoseheads" and the business of movie-making, including an epilogue that critiques the film itself. Strange Brew found a cult audience with fans of the Second City comedy troupe, of which Moranis and Thomas were members. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A film from Canada titled Hockey Night: are we at all surprised? This amiable little teen-oriented film is set in a small town where Hockey is King--or, perhaps, God. Rick Moranis is in charge of a boys' hockey team, in dire need of playing talent. Enter Megan Follows, who turns out to be the best goalie the team has ever had. Just one teeny problem: Megan is a girl. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

More like a series of MTV sequences than a long-term narration, this super-thin story line focuses on a kidnapped singer (Diane Lane) and her ex-boyfriend (Michael Pare) who goes forth to save her through rainy streets, the roar of elevated subways, several alleys, and the usual warehouses. Each thrust of the story has rock music that follows along with the narration. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This HBO comedy special is a send-up of Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz. Scorsese's film, it will be recalled, recorded the final concert of the rock group The Band. Polka deals with the rise and fall of that fabulous Lutonian twosome, the Schmenge Brothers. John Candy is Yosh Schmenge, and Eugene Levy is Stan Schmenge. "And ve are...der Happy Vanderers." This faux documentary traces the early lives of the Schmenge boys, their first successes on local Canadian television, and the ultimate dissolution of their accordian-dominated polka band. We are also permitted a few peeks at the Schmenges' private lives with their families, as they celebrate such venerated Lutonian customs as "The Exchanging of the Socks." An outgrowth of a recurring sketch on the old SCTV television weekly, The Last Polka also features veteran SCTVers Catherine O'Hara and Rick Moranis. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Robin Williams' comic shtick sabotages any attempt at comic development in Harold Ramis' patchy comedy farce Club Paradise. Williams plays Jack Moniker, a Chicago fireman injured in the line of duty, who uses his disability money to open up a run-down Caribbean resort. Jack eagerly awaits the planeload of tourists who will be his first patrons. This group of low-rent jackanapes include Barry Nye (Rick Moranis) and Barry Steinberg (Eugene Levy), a couple of horny geek bachelors; Phillipa Lloyd (Twiggy) and Terry Hamlin (Joanna Cassidy) as a couple of gals on the make; and Linda White (Andrea Martin), as a bossy American tourist. While the tourists shindig around Jack's ramshackle resort, a revolution is brewing on the island headed by revolutionary Ernest Reed (Jimmy Cliff). Trying to prevent the revolutionary upheaval is the dissipated British governor-general of the island, Governor Anthony Cloyden Hayes (Peter O'Toole), and the pompous Prime Minister Solomon Gundy (Adolph Caesar). ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

With a script that is too anemic for the red-blooded actors featured here, this anorexic comedy moves slowly up and down the corporate ladder with the fortunes and misfortunes of several company men. Jack Issel (Judge Reinhold) gets a VIP position at INC in the PR department (business-speak). Suddenly the corporation's shady activities come to the fore -- especially when a U.S. plant is set to close for a move south of the border where labor is almost free. Enmeshed in these tangles, Jack is hardly prepared to fall in love with the leading activist against the plant closing -- but he does. Meanwhile, a lot of other subplots quickly dispose of potentially budding villains like Stedman (Danny DeVito) the inside trader -- too bad. DeVito and Don King (appearing as himself) would have made a great team. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A space bum helps rescue a princess from an evil overlord with the help of a benevolent elder in this Star Wars send-up written and directed by Mel Brooks. Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and his half-man, half-dog co-pilot, Barf the Mawg (John Candy), are content to scour the galaxy living the easy life. But they reluctantly come to the rescue when Druish Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) is threatened by the evil Lord Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis), who wants to steal all of the air from her planet, Druidia. Trapped on a harsh desert world with Vespa and her robot chaperone, Dot Matrix (voice of Joan Rivers), Lone Starr and Barf are helpless to prevent Helmet from kidnapping the girl. But assistance arrives in the form of Yogurt (Brooks), a wizard who turns Lone Starr on to a mysterious power known as The Schwartz. Catching up with Helmet just as he's transforming his spaceship into a giant vacuum cleaner in orbit around Druidia, the reluctant heroes stage a dramatic showdown. Although it borrows most of its plot from the Star Wars series, Spaceballs also pokes fun at Star Trek, Snow White, and Planet of the Apes -- as well as the entire videocassette and movie marketing industries. The large supporting cast includes Dick Van Patten, Jim J. Bullock, and the voice of Dom DeLuise. John Hurt makes a cameo in a parody of the exploding chest scene he played in Alien. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

This feel-good ensemble comedy tracks a quartet of suburban siblings and their families over the course of a single summer. Hardworking Gil Buckman (Steve Martin) and his stay-at-home wife, Karen (Mary Steeenburgen), have just a few months to help their oldest son, Kevin (Jasen Fisher), overcome his high-strung behavior problems before he'll be relegated to special-education classes. Gil's difficult relationship with his own father, Frank (Jason Robards), has led him to become a would-be super-dad for his three kids, so he takes his son's difficulties more than a little personally. Gil's sister, Helen (Dianne Wiest), is trying to raise a moody, adolescent son (Leaf Phoenix) and an independent-minded daughter (Martha Plimpton) with no help from her well-off ex-husband, who's more interested in his new wife and family. Gil and Helen's sister, Susan (Harley Jane Kozak), meanwhile, must participate in the too-scripted Big Life Plans of her anal-retentive husband, Nathan (Rick Moranis), whose overachiever zeal infects even their toddler daughter. When long-lost brother Larry (Tom Hulce) show up with yet another get-rich-quick scheme, he brings with him a surprise addition to the family. Screenwriters Babaloo Mandel, Lowell Ganz, and Ron Howard negotiate their varied subplots with a deftness and comedic touch that transforms this conflicted clan into a suburban everyfamily. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Erstwhile inventor Rick Moranis has been experimenting with an electro-magnetic shrinking machine. He leaves the device unattended in his attic; shortly afterward, it is accidentally activated. Alas, the demon machine is aimed at Moranis' children, as well as the son of neighbor Matt Frewer. The kids, shrunk to 1/4-inch height, are tossed into the trash bin by the unwitting Moranis. For the rest of the film, our teeny-tiny protagonists attempt to gain their parents' attention--and to survive the wilds of the backyard, where all sorts of dangers, from bumblebees to lawnmowers, threaten their well-being. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids features Marcia Strassman as Moranis' wife, and juvenile players Robert Oliveri, Kristine Sutherland, Thomas Brown, Jared Rushton and Amy O'Neill. The visual effects are the handiwork of such masters as Joe Johnston, Phil Tippett, and David Allen. When originally released to theatres, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was double-billed with the "Roger Rabbit" cartoon Tummy Trouble; this is how it is presented on videotape as well. The film (the live-action one, that is) prompted a 1992 sequel, Honey, I Blew Up the Kid. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide