Ghostbusters II

By VARIETY STAFF

Columbia. Director Ivan Reitman; Producer Ivan Reitman; Screenplay Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd; Camera Michael Chapman; Editor Sheldon Kahn, Donn Cambern; Music Randy Edelman; Art Director Bo Welch
 
Bill Murray
Dan Aykroyd
Sigourney Weaver
Harold Ramis
Rick Moranis
Peter MacNicol
 

Ghostbusters II is babyboomer silliness. Kids will find the oozing slime and ghastly, ghostly apparitions to their liking and adults will enjoy the preposterously clever dialog.

In II, the foe is slime, a pinkish, oozing substance that has odd, selective powers - all of them (humorously) evil. Its origins have something to do with a bad imitation Rembrandt painting, the lecherous art historian with an indecipherable foreign accent who's restoring it (Peter MacNicol), and all the bad vibes generated by millions of cranky, stressed-out New Yorkers. The worse their attitude, the worse the slime problem, which is very bad indeed.

The Ghostbusters, naturally, are the only guys for the job.

Bill Murray gets the plum central role (or he forced it by seemingly adlibbing dozens of wisecracks) at the same time his character also manages to skip out on a lot of the dirty ghostbusting work, leaving it to his pals Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson.

While they are zapping Slimer, the main nasty creature from the original film, Murray's time is spent wooing back Sigourney Weaver, now a single mother.

It may be a first time, but Weaver get to play a softie, a nice break for the actress and her admirers (even if shots with her cute imperiled baby are scene-stealers).

(Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1989. Running time: 102 MIN.