Review of Ghostbusters II (1989) by Streebystation — 02 Jul 2016

Ghostbusters was a very huge franchise, let's admit that for once. But I don't think anyone would have expected the series to get as popular as it did. Set five years after the first movie, our Ghostbusting crew is at it again. However, at the time of release, it wasn't met with the same feedback as the first one. So, what exactly happened? Well, let's jump right in.

The last time we left them they had saved the city of New York from a mean old mother hubbard, but since then they experienced a decline and not really seen much ghost activity. Heck, some of them moved on like Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) having his own TV show and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) doing scientific work elsewhere. Winston and Ray (Ernie Hudson and Dan Aykroyd) are still the Ghostbusters, but more of attending parties for kids than actually capturing the supernatural. That is, until pink slime starts appearing from all over Manhattan and they have to reunite to see what on earth is going on. Little do they know about the bigger picture that is about to unfold. ...See what I did there?

Aykroyd and Ramis are back on the writing chair again, to bring us another adventure from our Saturday Night Crew plus one. I actually liked that Hudson's character, Winston was given more time to interact with the cast than before. There are some pretty good moments with him and the other that really shine through on what was a movie full of doubt. Will the villain work? It really is an interesting choice to give a more active role to the main big guy, Vigo the Carpathian by manipulating other things and people to do his work. ...Well, more active than Gozer. (To be fair, it really couldn't do much without getting revived first.).

I'm going to assume you seen the film already. I mean, You clicked the arrow that revealed this critique to begin with.

There are some very funny moments here just like the first one, but none that actually made me laughed my bum off. Well, except maybe when testing the pink slime on a toaster, that was pretty cute I think. I also think some of you might have noticed that not many of the jokes they set up try to cross the line, more for kids to understand (at the time at least.) Plus, some changes that will make the casual fan go: "Wait a minute, I thought Egon and Janine had a little thing going on here. Why is Janine going for Louis now?" That answer brings us to the cartoon show airing around the same time, The Real Ghostbusters.

From what I could gather, the series started faithful to the movie and had two seasons worth of spooky fun for kids and adults alike. However, anyone in production or watching the series would tell you that seasons 3 though 7 ended up dropping some of this to focus more on kids specifically, including making the plots more childish and essentially changing the show to Slimer and The Real Ghostbusters. No kidding, that green disgusting blob from the Sedgewick Hotel? He ended up taking more time than the actual cast we should have been focusing on! Thank goodness the movie doesn't do that, but some of the minor details from the show ended up sneaking into the product we did get. And I think that's what drove people up a wall along with those who only saw the first movie setting their expectations too high on the sequel.

A real crying shame too, the plot is great, the character interactions are fun and most of the charm of the original is still there. It just ended up in an inconvenient place at the wrong time. Please, understand where I come from by saying so: It took what was great and maintained the status quo, and to me that is very good.