I hope you didn’t think that I’d leave you hanging on the last week of the year! It’s been busy, but I always have time to entertain my wonderful readers! We’ve been looking at offbeat holiday films all month, but our big one just happened sooooo….. I hope you had a good one. But, with New Year’s Eve right around the corner I figured it would be a totally transparent excuse to look at a movie that also takes place right around New Year’s Eve. Ghostbusters 2 came out in 1989, the same year that we got such magnificent films as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Batman, and Star Trek V: The Search for God. There was a writer’s strike that had been going on that year so good scripts were hard to come by, but GB2 managed to have a pretty good lighthearted story that, although not quite as good as the original, still managed to tell a fun and enjoyable story, and it’s still my favorite of the two films.
The film opens with the ominous score and the “Five Years Later” script card telling us that it’s been five years since the events of the previous film, although since it was released in 1989, and the first one was released in 1984, hopefully that was the assumption of most viewers going into the movie, but it’s nice to get some context anyway. We start up this wacky tale with Ray and Winston, the two less popular characters in the main ensemble. They’re driving a worn and ragged looking Ecto-1, and we see that they’re performing for a birthday party! Now, for some reason, during their performance of the iconic plagiarized song, all of the kids start chanting “He-Man”. I don’t quite get this because He-man had been off the air for a number of years before this movie came out. Wouldn’t it have been more socially relevant to chant for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Not only were they huge at this point, their franchise was built completely off of merchandising just like Ghostbusters so it would have worked on more than one level. Maybe they should have let me write the script for whatever you call that trainwreck that came out earlier this summer. At least I’m witty. Anyway, this scene is meant to give us the impression that the ol’ Ghostbusters are all washed up. Ray and Winston are performing for birthday parties, Egon was running a science lab, and our good buddy Peter was hosting a BS show about psychics. Fun fact: according to Peter Venkman’s World of the Psychics, the world was supposed to have ended this past Valentine’s Day.
Well, everything seems to be fairly mundane, especially when we find out that Dana Barrett has been moonlighting as a restorationist for a classical art museum. They don’t just let her do this unsupervised though. She works with a charming, yet creepy man named Dr. Janosz Poha, played by the subtly hysterical Peter MacNicol. He’s recently acquired a rare and prestigious piece that he’ll be restoring personally, a portrait of Vigo the Carpathian! Vigo is one scary looking dude, let me tell you, and as we’ll see, he has eyes for Dana, or, Dana’s kid. Dana leaves the museum and picks up her kid, and on the way home, the stroller just develops a mind of its own and takes off with Oscar, the kid, in it. It weaves and bobs through crowds and winds up in the middle of traffic! Luckily the incident leaves the child unscathed, but it’s enough scare for Dana to approach Ray and Egon for help, but she explicitly requests that they not tell Peter, probably because he’s a self-absorbed douche. But, he needles the information out of them by physically assaulting Ray, and when the two of them show up to inspect Dana’s apartment, Peter forcibly inserts himself, and potentially damages Dana’s super expensive cello in the process. This scene is actually pretty funny as it gives us a little character insight. Egon and his siblings straightened their slinky as kids, and we find out that, quite surprisingly, Peter is actually pretty good with kids. No signs of paranormal foul play are found and so Ray tells Dana to call should anything else happen, then they leave.
In the meantime, Janosz has awoken the sleeping portrait of Vigo, and Vigo recites to him some BS prophecy about how he (Vigo) is to usher in the apocalypse, but he needs a vessel first in the form of a child. Dun, DUn, DUN! Janosz tells Vigo that he knows of a child that would be perfect, and then requests from this ancient demigod that he be able to take Dana as a wife because, and I can’t stress this nearly enough, he’s creepy. And thus we see that Janosz sells his soul to Vigo for the low price of marrying Sigourney Weaver, which when I say it out loud, doesn’t actually sound like that bad of a deal. She is a pretty good looking person after all. But I digress. There’s a power outage caused by the Ghostbusters as they were investigating the sewer system for paranormal goo. Janosz shows up to check on Dana, but she turns him down flatter than a Japanese nanoscopically sterile toilet. Our boys get arrested for investigating the supernatural, a breach of an injunction filed against them by the city, and they’re hauled off to jail. The ensuing court scene is also really funny as Harris Yulin plays the judge and his over-the-top no-nonsense performance is just fantastic paired with the irony of the situation to come. Tully is back representing the Ghostbusters and his bumbling is also hilarious, especially as Peter is feeding him lines to say to the jury. Well, the judge’s hard nosed attitude gets the slime in a tizzy and it brings back the ghosts of two convicts that the judge gave the chair, which really dates this film because New York hasn’t had the death penalty for over a decade. The ghosts harass the courtroom occupants and the judge has to eat all of the words he declared not a few minutes prior to this incident. The Ghostbusters use their old equipment to catch the ghosts and the judge drops all of the charges and lifts the restraining order.
This puts the Ghostbusters right back on the map as their commercials start running again,and the Ecto-1 gets a much needed makeover. The rehire Janine, and set shop back up in the fire house. It’s almost like nothing ever happened. In all the commotion, the pink ooze attacks Dana and Oscar while she’s trying to give him a bath. This prompts her to temporarily move in with Peter at his place, which gives the two characters a chance to rekindle their romance. That culminates in dinner between them as the rest of the team go to further investigate the river of slime below the city. In the process, they fall in and when they get spat back out, they get into a fight. Because of this, Egon realizes that the slime is the physical manifestation of NYC’s negative emotions built up over centuries. The B team crash the dinner party and everyone goes to meet with the mayor. I gotta say, he gets the best line out of either of the movies as he tells the team off, but I’ll leave that a surprise. Go ahead and check it out! Well, after the meeting, and with an election coming up, the mayor’s aid, Hardemeyer, played by this guy:
has the Ghostbusters committed so that they won’t bring negative attention to the mayor.
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| Geez, and I thought this guy was bad. |
Unsurprisingly, all hell breaks loose as the city finds itself besieged by the supernatural. Ghosts are everywhere, and the city emergency services lines are ringing off the hook. The Titanic pulls into port for crying out loud! By the way, Cheech Marin gets a cameo in that scene. It’s very cool. The mayor starts panicking, and wants to know where the Ghostbusters are. Needle head explains that he had them committed in order to help the mayor’s re election bid. This gets him fired, but the Ghostbusters are released, and it’s up to them to save the day. They concoct a plan wherein they’ll slim down the inside of the Statue of Liberty, and play upbeat and more importantly uplifting music to positively charge the slime. They use this happy slime to make the Statue walk through New York as New Yorkers along the route send good vibes. This scene features a cameo by the NES arcade controller. It’s very cool. The team use the good vibes of the people, and the torch from the statue to break into the museum where Janosz and Vigo are holding Dana and Oscar. There’s a final showdown, but the Ghostbusters manage to save the day by hosing down the painting and Janosz with happy slime. There’s a celebration not unlike the first movie, minus the inclusion of Ron Jeremy, and everyone lives happily ever after, especially Janosz.
All in all, it’s a really good film. Sure the crudeness of the humor has been toned down quite a bit, and the aesthetic has been shifted to more closely resemble that of the cartoon, which was also running at the time, but the story is funny and uplifting, the plot is solid, the acting is brilliant, and in general, it just leaves you feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. It does leave me with a few questions that were conspicuously overlooked in the trainwreck. For example, I really want to know just how many hours it takes for Dana and Peter’s relationship to implode. Also, does Janosz ever actually get laid? I’m inclined to say no, but his attempts could be an entire movie by themselves! That’s what I wanted out of the disaster, but alas, those questions, and so many more will most likely have to go unanswered. Also, just how ugly to you think Tully and Janine’s kids really ended up being? Gosh, I may have to take up fan fic after all. Anyway, enjoy this one while the new year is upon us, or any other time of the year because it will leave you happier than when you started it, and from this blogger to all of you, many thanks, and happy new year! I’ll see you on the other side, and we’ll continue looking at all things media!
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