The director and producer, who has died aged 75, brought his golden touch to family mega-hits from Ghostbusters to Kindergarten CopIvan Reitman was a director and producer with a golden touch for Hollywood comedy and feelgood entertainment – the heir, perhaps, of Ernst Lubitsch or Gregory La Cava from the golden age, but with a multiplex talent for the 80s and 90s – able to detonate serious box-office explosions.
His great heyday, importantly, coincided with the great heyday of video rental and home entertainment – an era of couples and families browsing the VHS racks at video rental stores on a Friday and Saturday night and deciding that comedies were the best bet: Reitman’s comedies.And this, most famously, was for the glorious high-concept fantasy comedy Ghostbusters in 1984, which brilliantly absorbed SNL-type comedy into the movie mainstream and made stars and serious players of its leads: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis.
Read full article