First of all...where are the ghosts? We have the Scolari Brothers and Slimer but there is an agonizing lack of spooks and spectres in this sequel and the bustings of required. Ghostbusters II should have opened with a huge set-piece (ala James Bond) and then launched the title screen. We have seen these guys set-up, we have had the origin story, they were cheered by the city after saving the world from 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together mass hysteria!
Get the point?
Instead the movie stumbles over the starting line by announcing that they were sued by everyone in New York for blowing-up Spook Central and were labelled as frauds. Yeah, because conjuring up a very tangible Marshmallow Man and Gozer's voice booming all over Manhattan is easy to pull off when you're a conman. Not only that but the team have disbanded and Dana has married someone other than Peter. In five years she dumped him, married someone else, had a kid with him, and was dumped herself when he left to go to Europe. That timeline seems a little tight.
A portrait of a gruesome medieval warlord being brought to a New York museum coincides with a viscous, psycho-magnatheric river of slime materializing beneath the streets. All of the hate and anger in New York has became tangible and is giving Vigo the Carpathian power from his painting. He wants to inhabit a newborn on the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve and thus take over the world some time later. He's hardly Gozer. Vigo does pretty much nothing for the whole movie and his motivation to become a 90s baby doesn't exactly frighten us.
Where is the darkness? This movie is far too light-hearted, helped none by Randy Edelman's lame score which is absolutely no match for the power of Elmer Bernstein from the first movie. Lazlo Kovac's is gone, by Michael Chapman does a fine job in his place, with some truly wonderful wide shots and camera blocking featuring up to six characters at once. GBII has great anamorphic photography but the darkness is not there and it is needed.
It satisfied me as a kid, but I can't help but be disappointed at the numerous missed opportunities when I watch it as an adult. It should have been more. It should have been much, much more.
I also find it odd that for a film that has a climax set on New Year's Eve there is not one mention of Christmas. And what's twice as weird, or just plain lazy, is the fact that the real life building that became Spook Central in the first movie is visible during the montage scene. All the had to do was point the camera in another direction or use a matte painting to alter it back to its fictional appearance.
Get the point?
Instead the movie stumbles over the starting line by announcing that they were sued by everyone in New York for blowing-up Spook Central and were labelled as frauds. Yeah, because conjuring up a very tangible Marshmallow Man and Gozer's voice booming all over Manhattan is easy to pull off when you're a conman. Not only that but the team have disbanded and Dana has married someone other than Peter. In five years she dumped him, married someone else, had a kid with him, and was dumped herself when he left to go to Europe. That timeline seems a little tight.
A portrait of a gruesome medieval warlord being brought to a New York museum coincides with a viscous, psycho-magnatheric river of slime materializing beneath the streets. All of the hate and anger in New York has became tangible and is giving Vigo the Carpathian power from his painting. He wants to inhabit a newborn on the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve and thus take over the world some time later. He's hardly Gozer. Vigo does pretty much nothing for the whole movie and his motivation to become a 90s baby doesn't exactly frighten us.
Where is the darkness? This movie is far too light-hearted, helped none by Randy Edelman's lame score which is absolutely no match for the power of Elmer Bernstein from the first movie. Lazlo Kovac's is gone, by Michael Chapman does a fine job in his place, with some truly wonderful wide shots and camera blocking featuring up to six characters at once. GBII has great anamorphic photography but the darkness is not there and it is needed.
It satisfied me as a kid, but I can't help but be disappointed at the numerous missed opportunities when I watch it as an adult. It should have been more. It should have been much, much more.
I also find it odd that for a film that has a climax set on New Year's Eve there is not one mention of Christmas. And what's twice as weird, or just plain lazy, is the fact that the real life building that became Spook Central in the first movie is visible during the montage scene. All the had to do was point the camera in another direction or use a matte painting to alter it back to its fictional appearance.