Ghostbusters II is a disappointing follow up to the box office behemoth of 1984 but it’s not the disaster that it’s often said to be. Certainly it lacks the verve of the original film and brings nothing particularly new to the party but it’s still a lot funnier than you probably remember it being – it’s not a bad film, by any means, just a bit underwhelming compared to its energetic and spectacular blockbusting forebear.

One of the film’s biggest flaws is that it brings little new to the party, but one of the new twists it does bring is that the film opens five years later with the Ghostbusters now disbanded after being sued for property damage. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) now runs an occult bookshop and teams up with Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) to work as an children’s entertainer for youngsters who barely remember who they are (a comment, perhaps, on the state of the budding franchise half a decade on from the first film); Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) is working for a corporate research company; and Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) is the host of cable television series World of the Psychic. Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) meanwhile has been married, divorced, become a mother to infant Oscar (twins Will and Hank Deutschendorf) and is now working as an art restorer (how does a world-class concert cellist become an equally world-class art restorer in five years? The film offers no answers) working on a portrait of brutal; 16th century tyrant Vigo the Carpathian (the body of German wrestler Wilhelm von Homburg, the uncredited voice of Max von Sydow) for the irritating Janosz Poha (Peter MacNicol). The Ghostbusters are reactivated when strange supernatural happenings start to threaten Oscar, a river of pink slime (“a psycho-reactive substance) is found in stretches of New York’s abandoned subway system and Vigo emerges from the painting hoping to be reborn in Oscar on New Year’s Eve.

Ghostbusters II is not without its problems. A little Peter MacNicol goes a very long way (he seems to be being set up as the new Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) who now works as the Ghostbusters’ accountant and is an awkward relationship with secretary Janine (Annie Potts)) and as in the first film Ernie Hudson’s Winston is often shamefully side-lined. And the plot keeps recycling gags and situations from the first film to lesser effect. This is never more obvious than in the finale which simply replaces the Stay Puft Marshmallow man for the Statue of Liberty. A lot of the effects, particularly some early CGI effects, inevitably loot terrible now, far more dated than those seen in the film made five years before.

But on the flipside, there are more properly scary moments than in the first film (a collection of severed heads on spikes in the subway is a particularly grisly moment while a possessed Janos, eyes firing out red beams of supernatural light, wandering along a corridor is an indelibly creepy image) and the courtroom scene is the equal of anything the first film had to offer. Director Ivan Reitman even tips his hat to his exploitation roots when during the chaos the “mood slime” unleashes on New York, it oozes, The Blob (1958)-like, from a cinema showing Reitman’s early film Cannibal Girls (1973) – that film’s star, Eugene Levy, shot a scene for Ghostbusters II as Tully’s father but it was cut. The sharp eyed will note that the cinema is also showing, according to the posters on display, David Cronenberg’s Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1976), both films produced by Reitman.

Critics at the time – and many since – have complained that Ghostbusters II just isn’t funny but just a few minutes with the start of the film will put paid to that old bugbear. You’ll wish that the reformation of the Ghostbusters could have been delayed just a little while so that we could see more of Venkman’s World of the Psychic television show in particular. Murray has complained several times that the film didn’t give Venkman much to do (this simply isn’t true either) but in the early scenes in particular he’s on top form. The scenes between him and the baby are less convincing though – the softer, less cynical Venkman simply isn’t as funny.

Ghostbusters II was critically panned when it was first released and flopped at the box office (it opened a week before Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) shattered existing box office records). Murray was so disheartened that he refused to return for a third instalment, effectively putting paid to the franchise. It was revived in 2016 with Paul Feig’s box office disaster Ghostbusters and a direct sequel to the first two films, Ghostbusters: Afterlife in 2021 with all of the original cast, bar Harold Ramis who died in 2014, returning to their original roles and with Reitman’s son Jason taking over directorial duties. A 2009 video game is also a direct sequel to Ghostbusters II (Aykroyd described it as “essentially, the third movie”).

Yes, Ghostbusters II is a disappointment. It’s lacking something, a spark that the original film had possessed in abundance but it’s far from being a terrible film. There are moments that drag perhaps, and a potentially more interesting story about the Ghostbusters trying to hang on to what little relevance they still have is hurriedly abandoned in favour of a noisier effects driven extravaganza, but it’s unfair to maintain that it’s the disaster it was perceived to be at the time. It’s under-performance at the box office might well have been due to the unstoppable Batman juggernaut that slayed all competition and while it’s not as good as the first film, it’s a perfectly enjoyable bit of nonsense that deserves a long overdue re-evaluation.