The Happy New Year Blogathon – Ghostbusters II (1989)

This is my 1st of 2 entries in the The Happy New Year Blogathon being hosted by Movie Movie Blog Blog.

Tnx for letting me take part!

“Let’s see what happens when we take away the puppy.” – Egon

Number of Times Seen – at least 5 times (Theater in ’89, cable and 26 Dec 2017)

Brief Synopsis – The Ghostbusters are back and this time must stop a tyrannical ghost from returning and causing havoc in New York City.

My Take on it – I’m old enough to recall the hype that this film caused before it came out largely due to the fact that so many people (myself included) absolutely loved the original.

The problem with sequels is that they usually make you believe that its possible to actually top the original since that is such a rare feat that very few can achieve properly.

This film goes a slightly different route and tries to be more of a real comedy than the original was but loses out on the adventurous and mysterious aspects that we got just 5 years earlier.

It was great seeing the entire cast returning here and in some scenes it felt like a fun reunion film but it loses so much because they try too hard here to entertain and the story gets lost along the way.

There are some really clever scenes here including the Titanic one and the fur coat one but overall it feels as if it is trying to rehash something that worked much better.

The strongest point of this film is the music and we get a great diversity in the genres of the songs that keep certain scenes (mostly the montages) fun to watch despite the story itself feeling quite less inviting than the original.

Bottom Line – Not as good as the original and plays more as a comedy than an adventurous idea. Nice to see the cast reunited because they work so well together but this film tries too hard to entertain and loses something along the way. They have some very clever scenes about ghosts that work really well especially the Titanic scene and the scene dealing with a fur coat. The music is amazing and they have some nice montages that also work quite well despite the story itself being very inviting.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – The kid who tells Ray that, according to his dad, the Ghostbusters are “full of crap” is played by Jason Reitman, the son of director Ivan Reitman, and future Oscar-nominated director of Juno (2007) and Up In the Air (2009). Reitman’s daughter Catherine Reitman plays the girl with the puppy in Egon’s lab.(From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy

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