Do you remember how
The Empire Strikes Back started
with Luke, Han and Chewbacca the heroes of the Rebellion all going their
separate ways after losing their jobs? And how Princess Leia got
married to some dude we never see and had this guy’s kid, but now she’s
divorced and has changed careers. If you don’t remember any of that it’s
because it never happened as that would have made for a terrible,
terrible movie. Sadly that is pretty much what fans of
Ghostbusters got when they went to see this much anticipated sequel.
The film starts with the title card “
Five Years Later” and we see Ecto-1 tooling down the streets of New York as Stantz (
Dan Aykroyd) and Winston (
Ernie Hudson)
are apparently responding to a call. They are lead into house by a
concerned woman who hopes the Ghostbusters can handle “them” because
they’ve been a nightmare, Winston responds with the question “
How big are they?” Answer:
Four Feet.
We then get the reveal that it is a child’s birthday party and the
Ghostbusters are here to entertain the kiddies. Winston asking how big
they are now makes no sense as they were hired to work this party so
you’d assume they’d now the rough age of the kids attending and their
“size” isn’t really a relevant factor. I know I seem to be making a big
deal out of lame sight gag but to me this was a big “
What the fuck moment,”
weren’t these guys saviours of the city? You would think book deals and
movie and television option alone would be enough to set these guys up
for life, and that’s only if it turns out there are no more ghosts for
them to bust in the world.
“Who you gonna call…not these guys.”
So what happened in those five years? How did they go out of
business? Why does Dana have a kid that isn’t Venkman’s? Well from
Winston we find out that right after the events of the first movie the
Ghostbusters were sued by every state, county and city agency in New
York and almost everyone is calling them showboating frauds. Stantz and
Winston are doing these kid parties, Egon (
Harold Ramis) is doing studies on how emotions effect the environment, Venkman (
Bill Murray) hosts a bad television show called “World of the Pyschic,” and Dana (
Sigourney Weaver) is a divorced single mom working as an art restorer at the local museum.
To be honest I’d watch this show.
Audiences love an underdog and in the first movie we were introduced
to a group of eccentric goofballs that believed in ghosts and that they
could be captured, no one else believed in them, that is until the shit
started to hit the fan as ghost after ghost attacked the residents of
New York City culminating in a giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man stomping
down the street in the aid of an evil god. The day was saved and the
underdogs were now the heroes of the city. Then for some reason Ramis
and Aykroyd believed it was necessary for the sequel to work they would
have to go back to square one.
Returning to my
Star Wars analogy that would be like Luke returning to moisture farming or maybe a hosting reality show about shooting wamp rats. In
Empire Strikes Back
Luke, Han, Chewie, and Leia are all heroes of the Republic, but they
are still underdogs because the Empire is still out there and still
very, very evil. You just have to up the stakes, change the threat level
on either or a physical or emotional level or both. There is no need to
undermine what your characters did in the first movie as that is likely
to just piss off the fans of the original.
Slimer returns…for no actual reason.
So who is the big bad in
Ghostbusters II? Well it’s a
haunted painting; in fact it’s one of the paintings being restored at
the museum Dana works at, a beautiful coincidence that makes no sense.
Vigo Von Homburg Deutschendorf the Scourge of Carpathia is an evil
spirit that needs the body of a child so he can live again. He is aided
by Dana’s boss Dr. Janosz Poha (
Peter MacNicoll)
who is established as a goofy guy with a terrible accent and a penchant
for work place sexual harassment. Vigo is not threatening or scary,
despite being voiced by the awesome
Max von Sydow, and the comedy stylings of Peter MacNicol here are just embarrassingly bad.
Hey Mister MacNicol, Dwight Frye wants his accent back.
While investigating weird goings on surrounding Dana’s baby the boys
discover a river of slime under the city. Unfortunately they
accidentally black out the
entire city when Stantz breaks a
power cable during his rushed ascent, and this gets them arrested. Who
knew the New York City grid was so touchy.
The River of Slime.
Our heroes find themselves in court before a very nasty and
pessimistic Judge (Harris Yulin) who rants angrily against their
charlatan tactics, luckily for the boys a jar of the slime is sitting on
nearby table and it reacts violently to the Judge’s anger. For some
reason this brings forth two ghosts that he once sentenced to death.
The Judge begs for help, offering to drop all charges if the guys and
stop that ghostly duo. Our intrepid heroes easily bag the spooks. Cue
music video montage of the gang back at work fighting ghosts.
Hunting the ghosts of good movies past.
Because of the popularity of the
Real Ghostbusters cartoon
they movie had its tone changed to be more “family friendly” with the
ghost themselves being less scary looking and more in keeping with their
cartoon brethren. I mean everyone knows kids hate to be scared, right?
Attacked by cartoon ghosts.
The connection between the pink slime and ghosts is never made clear
in this movie. We are told that it has psychokinetic powers that are
reactive to emotions and Stantz calls the stream of this slime under the
city a “
River of pure evil.” How a substance that is pure evil
can be later positively charged is never explained. What is Vigo’s
connection to the slime is also left rather vague. The slime is
apparently a by-product of the negative emotions of New Yorkers, so did
the slime awaken Vigo from the painting or did Vigo bring the slime from
the other realms and is using the negative emotions of the city to
power it? Now I’m not saying you have to explain
everything in
your big budget supernatural comedy but if things just happen randomly
and for no apparent reason it takes away the tension. If anything can
happen and there are no rules then you’ve just got a mess for a script
and audience that won’t care.
Lady Liberty vs The Blob.
The rest of the film follows much of the formula of the first one;
they become media darlings again, things start to turn ugly, they have
to go see the Mayor, a government stooge will give them a hard time, and
then the boys will show up to save the day. Check please.
Observations:
• Dana once again is at the center of this paranormal event. Lazy and unnecessary.
• She has also given up a career as a concert cellist to work at a museum. I guess music was just a passing fad.
• Their new shoulder patches are just the movies logo. Lame.
• Slimer is back for two scenes only because he is a popular character from the cartoon.
• I’m betting the reaction to the Statue of Liberty walking down Fifth
Avenue would result in more screaming in terror than in cheering.
“
Gojira!”
There are some fun moments in this movie and the cast of actors here
have created characters that are hard not to fall in love with, if only
this had been in service of a good story we’d all be much happier. Vigo
is just a terrible villain and his ghostly plan to possess a baby and
then rule the world just seems old hat. Give me more stuff about ghostly
trains and the Titanic arriving at New York harbor and I’d have been a
much happier camper.
I wonder if Jack Dawson is with that group.
What it comes down to is that
Ghostbusters II comes
across more like a third and tired installment in a franchise more than
the direct sequel it is. Like there was another chapter and somehow we
all just missed seeing it. I waited patiently waited five years for
them to give us a sequel and I wish they’d waited a bit longer, hell I’d
have been just as happy if all we got as a sequel was
The Real Ghostbusters Cartoon.
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