It's time for more cheesy spookiness with Halloweentown II,
a far better follow up from the last lame movie,
with much better acting, much better effects, much better visuals...
Does that make it good? Well, let's not say anything we can't take back.
The Crumbwell's are finally throwing a Halloween party, and even invited over their grandma,
This is being done because the mother has no intention the kids ever going back to spooky old Halloweentown.
But that of course changes when an evil boy comes into the mix,
steals the grandma's magical book, and uses it to literally suck all the color out of Halloweentown.
Yup, all the crazy ghouls and weird goblins are now being replaced with normal people,
bland attitudes, and a black-and-white landscape.
To make things worse, the boy, which we now find out is the son of the villain from the last film,
takes their grandma once again out of commission, meaning it's up to the kids to figure out how to set everything right.
So for the most part, everything is a big upgrade.
First of all, look at these effects.
Okay they're not phenomenal, but they're pretty damn good for that time period!
The black and white filters are almost as good as Pleasant-ville,
and they don't just turn everything black and white, there are still hints of color around so it's not visually uninteresting to look at
and the color that is in there really pops a lot more.
The acting is also a lot better.
Unlike the last film where you're constantly trying to not snicker at how awkward the performances are,
here, I don't know if they got a new director, or if just more time has passed for them to get used to their roles,
but everybody seems much more on track.
Okay, they're not phenomenal performances, but they're not in any way distracting.
The story allows for a lot of fun ideas too,
like did you know to undo a spell you literally just say the spell backwards?
That's kinda smart!
And it also leads to some good problem solving,
as they said a word that apparently reversed the spell, so they know that if they say it backwards, that'll be what the spell is.
So they have to retrace their steps, remember what they said, say the words backwards, it's actually kind of neat.
There's also a place where all your missing items go,
you ever miss the remote, or your earring or something like that?
This place in Halloweentown has it.
But the owner got infected by the spell too, so he has everything clean,
and now they can find everything, which is against the idea, it has to be lost in order to be found,
and yeah, it's kind of creative!
The worlds themselves look a lot better, there's much more of a visual art design,
and its more colorful and interesting.
But the major downside is that they don't go to that many places
A lot of the movie is them just staying in one spot,
talking to each other, trying to figure out what to do.
And because the spell is de-monster-izing everybody
you don't really get to see that many monsters either,
that is, until the end.
They have this really cool idea where the bad guy casts this spell
and whatever mask they're wearing at the Halloween party, they become that creature.
The monsters become monsters, the vampires become vampires, it's really neat.
But the problem is this happens in the climax. Why didn't this happen in the middle of the film?
A lot of these makeups are very creative and goofy and fun again,
why weren't we allowed to see 'em more?
As cheesy as the makeup was in the first film, they were at least creative and allowed us to see a lot of them.
Here, it's all kind of kept until the last couple minutes.
And they're cool, but for a movie called Halloweentown, I expected to see a little more Halloween imagery.
So I guess that is the one thing the first film has over this one is that it does have a little bit more variety
in locations, and weird makeup designs and so forth
But for everything else, this movie does things a lot better.
The ideas are more interesting, the acting is more interesting, the visuals are more interesting
I feel like they got a bigger budget to work on this,
but they still had a lot of time restraints,
so they had to move things around and maybe they only had certain locations for a certain amount of time,
and I dunno, but that's what it feels like watching it.
Though they're given a lot more, you're still always made aware of the limitations.
But for the most part, I think did the limitations, okay,
at least, better than the last one.
Would I watch it again? No
Is there anything really in it for adults? Not much
But as kid's TV movies go, I think it's got enough to be imaginative.
Not a glowing review, but a positive one.
If you've got a kid that's interested, just like Halloween candy, it's perfect junk food.