Rick Moranis plays small men who are sure they are about to be noticed, and he makes them funnier than the script has any right to expect. In Ghostbusters (1984) that covers for a thin plot; elsewhere it is often the best reason to stay.
Fi1m perspective
Louis Tully throws a party in Ghostbusters (1984) and does all the talking. Rick Moranis improvised his way through the scene, and you can hear it: the sentences carry on past the point where a writer would have cut them, because Louis has no idea that nobody is listening. We laughed harder at that party than at anything the ghosts got up to, and the reason is that Moranis never lets Louis suspect he is the joke. He is having the evening of his life.
That is the man he kept being asked to play. He came to films from SCTV, where he and Dave Thomas made Bob and Doug McKenzie, and he took the pair into Strange Brew (1983), which he co-wrote, co-directed and starred in. Hollywood then found him a run of accountants, inventors and sidekicks: Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors (1986), where he sang and carried the film; Wayne Szalinski in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989); Nathan Huffner in the ensemble of Parenthood (1989). The odd one out is Dark Helmet in Mel Brooks's Spaceballs (1987), a villain, and the one time the menace was his to play. He improvised there too, in the scene with the action figures.
What he does well is the small part. Ivan Reitman used him twice, and both times Moranis made more of Louis than the script supplied. In Ghostbusters the plotting is thin and the people around the central trio are there because the next scene needs them; whenever Louis is on, that stops mattering, though a supporting performance cannot do all the writing. Ghostbusters II (1989) is the first film run again with the volume down, and Louis's speech in court defending the team is the best written thing in it. He and Harris Yulin's judge are the only two performers who have understood what kind of film they are in.
The limit is the part itself. He was cast as the nerd so often that critics stopped expecting anything else, and Parenthood is a fair example of a good comic turn that goes exactly where you think. He was also choosy, and stepped away from live-action features around 1997; the voice work that followed tends to echo the McKenzie brothers, as in Brother Bear, and he turned down more than one invitation back to Ghostbusters. 'I took a break, which turned into a longer break,' he said, which is about as much drama as he will allow the subject. He has since filmed a Spaceballs sequel, in 2025. After all those accountants, it is Dark Helmet he came back for, and we do not blame him.
Biography
Rick Moranis is a Canadian actor and comedian. Born Frederick Allan Moranis on 18 April 1953 in Toronto, Ontario, he began his career as a radio disc jockey before moving into television and sketch comedy.
He rose to prominence as a cast member on the Canadian series Second City Television (SCTV) in the 1980s. Moranis is known for his roles as Louis Tully in Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989), Wayne Szalinski in the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids trilogy (1989–1997), Dark Helmet in Spaceballs (1987), and Seymour Krelborn in Little Shop of Horrors (1986). He has also provided voice work, including as Rutt in Brother Bear (2003).
Moranis married make-up designer Ann Belsky in 1986; she died in 1991. He took an extended break from live-action film roles from the late 1990s to focus on raising their two children.
