In this recurring column, we revisit (and reconsider) eagerly anticipated films that didn’t seem to fulfill their pre-release promise.
It says something about Ghostbusters’ enduring popularity that, twenty-five years after its proton pack-wielding foursome first rid Manhattan of evil specters, news of a forthcoming video game and potential third cinematic installment – both of which plan to bring back most of the original cast – elicits near-breathless excitement. And yet the franchise’s twenty-year idleness since Ghostbusters II also speaks volumes about that 1989 sequel, which effectively slimed everyone’s fond memories of the original. Reuniting Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis and Annie Potts for another supernatural go-round, Ivan Reitman’s follow-up (co-written, as before, by Ramis and Aykroyd) seemed to have all the requisite pieces in place for another blockbuster, including a bigger budget that afforded all manner of special effects. Yet nearly two decades after it first disappointed fans, the film remains a lumpy mishmash of regurgitated elements and creatures, carelessly tossed-off one-liners and wannabe catchphrases (“Two in the box, ready to go, we be fast, and they be slow!”), and a plot made up of one good idea and many, many lousy ones.
Five years after they defeated Gozer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, the Ghostbusters’ business has been disbanded by lawsuits and court orders, and Peter Venkman (Murray) has broken up with Dana (Weaver) – who, busy bee that she is, rebounded by getting married, having a baby boy named Oscar, and getting divorced. When Oscar’s baby carriage mysteriously speeds down the sidewalk and into traffic, she turns to her old friends, who discover that a river of slime is running beneath the city’s streets, and in the direction of the art museum where Dana works and an enormous, cartoonishly spooky painting of a 16th-century despot named Vigo resides. Ghostbusters II’s sole clever idea is to make the metropolis’ slime a manifestation of New Yorkers’ unpleasantness. It’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek mockery of the city’s notorious reputation that might have proved fruitful if the story wasn’t such a slapdash mess, lurching from a pitiful construction-worker bit (replete with Murray, Aykroyd and Ramis affecting overripe New Yawk accents), to a courtroom scene in which the goo goes nuclear once a judge screams that the Ghostbusters should “burn in hell,” to an FX-heavy finale that finds a way to make the appearance of the Titanic, a walking Statue of Liberty and the resurrected Vigo seem equally underwhelming.
Throughout, there’s the familiar-to-sequels impression that the filmmakers are merely trying to rehash what viewers liked about the first installment, including the Ghostbusters’ conflict with City Hall, a short, strange weirdo who gets possessed by the main villain (in this case, Peter MacNicol’s insufferable art restoration chief Janosz), and a cruddy, upfront soundtrack that desperately wants to make the same impact as its predecessor. This last issue is made even lamer by Reitman not only using Bobby Brown’s “On Our Own” at least three times during the film (including over the final credits), but actually providing the former New Edition singer with a cameo that, within the context of the action at hand, makes absolutely no sense. Then again, very little of Ghostbusters II seems guided by clear thinking, whether it’s the fact that – after getting clearance to resume business – the Ghostbusters’ uniforms feature the new spook-with-two-fingers logo (what, they know they’re in a sequel?), or the climactic shot of a painting that envisions the Ghostbusters as classical champions rather than the pitiable faded heroes this second saga turned them into.
