Review of Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge (2001) by Ethan B — 30 Oct 2014

As opposed to the first installment, which had a much more meandering pace, this one moves along quite nicely. The premise is well conceived and has a much better structure.

But with a more appealing narrative comes more distracting plot holes. Why would they ever take a bus to Halloweentown when they can just walk through a portal every time. Also, some problems could have obviously been solved earlier, but weren't addressed in order to stretch the script to fill the runtime. For instance, if Gort had told them much earlier about his time portal it would have saved Luke and Marnie all that trouble trying to find a way to get back to the future. And then you introduce the time-travel element, which has no set of rules whatsoever, avoiding all explanation as to how the characters are defying the laws of physics. As a pedant for these kinds of details, I found myself getting a headache from a movie that is really easy to follow.

Of course we have to realize that it is a film targeted towards young adults. Although it's not without a porous script, it's more engaging than its predecessor and much funnier too. It's a bigger and better movie, and closer to what the previous film should have been.

Twizard Rating: 82.