How do I know Ghostbusters is really that good? Because right at the :27 second mark of this review, I stopped listening to the narration because I too busy enjoying Ray's adorably befuddled reaction to praise, lol.
Which is why I'm going to slightly disagree with the notion that Ray has no arc in the film. His friendship with Peter has an arc. He is the one to continually remind Peter that he's never taken his status as a scientist seriously (for instance, "You've never been out of college, you don't know what it's like out there," and "You never studied"). Even when they become Ghostbusters, Peter's only really interested in the money they could get, not furthering scientific exploration. But towards the end of the film, when Peter holds up Ray as "the heart of the Ghostbusters" to the crowd, it shows that Peter is finally taking the team seriously and acknowledging Ray's expertise, instead of mocking it. And Ray takes note of this, that's why it means so much later when he says, "Nice working with you,
Doctor Venkman." He's treating Peter as a peer, instead of his goof off friend who never studied.
That said, I agree with the reviewer about the screenplay's tight, economic storytelling . You don't need a ton of set up to establish the characters' relationships and history. We can infer so much right away based on how the guys behave around each other. Like the reviewer says, it's something a lot of these modern franchise blockbusters could learn from. I do prefer movies that throw you right into the action with the characters in their prime, rather than wasting so much of a movie on a spoon fed origin story.
"You forgot the first rule of fanatics. When you become obsessed with the enemy...you become the enemy."