I first saw ‘Ghostbusters II’ on the big screen in the last week of December 1989 and couldn’t resist the chance to return for the 35th anniversary screening. It has more characterization than the original, together with a bigger slice of romantic interest, accompanied by a rousing score from Randy Newman. Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver’s incomplete relationship from the first film becomes here a pivot around which the movie falls into place, and so seamless is the integration of romantic interest, special effects, comedy and horror that this is one of those rare occasions where the sequel actually eclipses its forebear.

We even have a less rushed finale, and we leave this film with the requisite pangs of nostalgia for the ‘Ghostbusters’ universe which never takes itself too seriously but which has given us characters about whom we want to know more. We begin with Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson performing at a children’s party, but this is five years after the Ghostbusters saved New York (and the world), and they have now been eclipsed in the eyes of the kids by He-Man. Yesterday’s saviours are tomorrow’s lost property waste. But, the reemergence of paranormal goings on, this time in a New York Museum, means that the Ghostbusters should not be written off yet.

They even get to have their prison sentence, for digging up the roads to look for the latest supernatural ghouls without a licence, commuted on the spot by a fervent judge who a moment earlier thought that they deserved the death penalty but are now indispensable to him when ghosts start chasing him around his courtroom. Rick Moranis, who in the 1984 original was written off as a nerdy law student, is now ‘mature’ enough to represent the Ghostbusters in court, and is even allowed to have a romantic interest of his own.

This sequel goes deeper than the first, while still serving up the same levels of humour and action, though Murray’s character, who freely admits to being a fraud, does not convince when he is shown trying to look comfortable around Weaver’s baby. For someone used to issuing wisecracks and being the movie’s ironic centre, here he has to look like he can play a ‘regular guy’ – and this misfires. Giving his character an arc actually, and ironically, takes away the one thing that made him so integral to the spirit of ‘Ghostbusters’ in the first place.