In the first five minutes of Ghostbusters faculty member Dr. Peter Venkman is conducting fake experiments on the dime of the university he's defrauding. Experiments which involve torturing a barely paid student with electric shocks while falsifying data to impress another student so Venkman can have sex with her in a totally imbalanced power dynamic that was probably a violation of university rules even in the 80s. Then, when the university rightfully kicks him out, they're treated like unreasonable stuck up dicks who won't just let Venkman do his thing.
A theme which is repeated with the EPA inspector Walter Peck later on who is totally in the right up until the moment they start shutting down dangerous machinery without testing it or forcing the qualified personnel to do it safely.
Of course, that kind of stuff is pretty much par for the course in any kind of old(er) movie (and even ones made today) and a lot of 80s movies I grew up on, and you have to decide whether it affects your enjoyment of it or not now or whether you would show it to kids (at the very least with an explanation). I still love Ghostbusters and it's one of my favorite movies.
Revenge of the Nerds is a different story, between the rape of the head cheerleader Betty under false pretenses by Louis posing as Ted McGinley's character in costume, and the invasion of the cheerleader's sorority house and placing of cameras everywhere. It's treated as if the fact that the cheerleaders were assholes to the nerds first means sexual assault, home invasion, and placing hidden cameras in private areas as revenge is perfectly okay.
Of course it's all played for laughs and if you dismissed every comedy or even romantic comedy where the characters behaved like horrible people at some point you'd have very slim pickings to watch because that's more the norm than the exception. But I guess it's a judgment call on where you draw that line.
A theme which is repeated with the EPA inspector Walter Peck later on who is totally in the right up until the moment they start shutting down dangerous machinery without testing it or forcing the qualified personnel to do it safely.
Of course, that kind of stuff is pretty much par for the course in any kind of old(er) movie (and even ones made today) and a lot of 80s movies I grew up on, and you have to decide whether it affects your enjoyment of it or not now or whether you would show it to kids (at the very least with an explanation). I still love Ghostbusters and it's one of my favorite movies.
Revenge of the Nerds is a different story, between the rape of the head cheerleader Betty under false pretenses by Louis posing as Ted McGinley's character in costume, and the invasion of the cheerleader's sorority house and placing of cameras everywhere. It's treated as if the fact that the cheerleaders were assholes to the nerds first means sexual assault, home invasion, and placing hidden cameras in private areas as revenge is perfectly okay.
Of course it's all played for laughs and if you dismissed every comedy or even romantic comedy where the characters behaved like horrible people at some point you'd have very slim pickings to watch because that's more the norm than the exception. But I guess it's a judgment call on where you draw that line.
