SLIMER
★★★★★ (4 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing Slimer.
One of the characters in the movie Ghostbusters is a ghost named Slimer. He is green, legless, and mostly a mouth. Slimer loves to eat and he also loves to slime, which is what happens when he touches anyone or anything. He leaves a layer of slime behind him, much like a slug. They could not call him Slugger because that has too strong of an association with baseball.
His actual name is not Slimer. No one knows his real name or who he was before he died. Nor does anyone know how he died. His missing legs may be a clue. Perhaps they were blown off in combat and he bled to death. Or maybe he just never had legs. Whatever the circumstances of his passing, something kept him here on Earth. Possibly his search for his missing legs.
It makes no sense that he would eat. As a ghost, his physical manifestation has no way to metabolize the food he consumes. My guess is that it’s an emotional based eating, possibly a cry for help.
Despite the darkness of his current state, he manages to keep a smile on his face most of the time. It may be denial, or it may be that he’s happier as a ghost than he ever was during life. To be honest, if I could walk through walls and eat whatever I wanted, I’d be pretty happy.
He can’t talk, and not just because his mouth is full most of the time. He can make little noises. Eeeks and urks, but no real words. Unless these noises are ghost words. This inability to talk must be very frustrating for him, much the way that babies are frustrated. He can see and understand the world around him, but he’s unable to do anything other than slime and frighten people.
I say he, but Slimer may actually be a girl. I slowed the movie down and tried to watch every frame, looking to see if maybe I could make out some genitalia. I feel like I saw a vagina, but it was too blurry to tell. It may have just been a fold of skin. He has a lot of those.
When you see one of the Ghostbusters bust Slimer with a laser gun, it’s hard not to feel bad for it. It being Slimer, not the gun. I have no emotions about the gun.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing pinecones.
