Movie of the Day – Ghostbusters II

Yeah that’s right, letting the good times roll with the sequel to Ghostbusters.  I will admit that the second one wasn”t the greatest and frankly, the inferior Ghostbusters, but damned if it isn’t entertaining. Getting the gang all back together after saving New York from a giant Marshmallow monster wasn’t enough, this time the stakes are inevitably raised higher and the monster equally imposing.

The film opens with a title reading “Five Years Later” and finds the ghostbusters living in hard times. A restraining order has forbidden the boys to partake in paranormal warfare, and as a result they have had to seek other lines of work. Ray (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston (Ernie Hudson) spend their time performing at children’s’ birthday parties, and Egon (Harold Ramis) is busy conducting experiments investigating the effect of human emotions on the environment, leaving ghostbusting behind. Venkman (Bill Murray) and Dana (Sigourney Weaver) have split up. Venkman now hosts a local cable show called “The World of the Psychic.” Dana, now divorced and the mother of a little baby named Oscar, works as an art restorer in a museum — and this is where the plot kicks in. While Dana is restoring a portrait of a 16th-century tyrant by the name of Vigo the Carpathian, the portrait becomes hexed. The evil Vigo wants to return to life by taking over the body of Dana’s little child. Vigo has enlisted Dana’s boss, Janosz Poha (Peter MacNicol), to compel Dana to cooperate. Soon dirty sludge and slime flow through the streets of Manhattan, and the ghostbusters have to reunite to save the city from a funky paranormal evil. – Paul Brenner, Rovi

OK, so I found Gozer to be more intimidating than the European trash Viggo.  For shit’s sake it was a damn painting, just burn the fucking thing and get it over with.  I get that he is the Viggo the Carpathian, but couldn’t he find a better henchman than Peter MacNicol?  Anyways, Viggo wasn’t the big draw of the movie, oh no, it was the river of slime!  Yeah a river of slime.  Slime that feeds off the negative energy of New York (I also imagine that it feeds off their inflated egos for living in New York) and the slime itself does awesome things.  It turns fur coats into living beings.  It transforms bathtubs into killer bathtubs.  It essentially makes everything bad given the the transitive properties it holds.  But that slime is a wonderful gift as it can be used for both good and evil, also it makes a toaster dance.

Getting the gang all back together is exciting since it was the cast that made the first movie work.  It’s so natural watching Murray, Ramis, Aykroyd and Hudson get back together to quick banter and bust some ghosts.  The comedy just rolls off their dialogue quips and while dry in some instances, it is the nice hallmark of a great comedy.

Seriously, I don’t need to go into length about what makes this an amazing movie.  I am and will always be a Ghostbbusters fanatic, unless the third movie they are making fucks it all up and crosses the streams.  If so I am out.