GB2 Mystery: Roger Ebert's Ghostbusters II *Print* Review. Where is it?

Ghostbusters Discussion General Ghostbusters Discussion
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I was just mentioning this on a seperate topic but thought I’d create a topic of it’s own to see if we can track this artefact down.

Ok. So as a fan and student of the late, great Roger Ebert, it’s always bugged me that his archive website doesn’t have his print review for “Ghostbusters II”. He reviewed the film on his show “At the Movies With Siskel & Ebert” and both he and Gene Siskel were extremely negative about GB2, while both enjoyed the original(GB1 got two thumbs up from both and 3.5/4 from Roger Ebert in his print review. Which is a great read if you haven’t read it). But the review for GB2 that would’ve appeared in newspapers around the country and in his home town Chicago(his home paper was the Chicago Sun-Timea) is nowhere to be found. I can’t find a copy on the internet anywhere.

So 2 questions come to mind: A) was there even a print review to begin with? and B) Can we track it down? I don’t think I can think of another example of a film Ebert reviewed on his TV show but didn’t also have a print review for. For example, he famously didn’t review the original Terminator film for whatever reason. But I can’t think of an example of where both Gene & Roger reviewed a film on TV but no print reviews exists. If anyone can name an example I would love to know about it because it may help solve this mystery & lead me to think there was no print review(for whatever reason).

What’s also strange is that Ghostbusters 2 is the only big, massive movie from the summer of '89 that I can’t find an Ebert review of.

So, you might be asking “what can we do?” And the answer is…I don’t know? Do any of you know or happen to know someone who keeps old newspapers from June 1989? Specifically the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, or one of the syndicated papers that carried his column? Or do any of you live in Chicago and want to go on a treasure hunt? If you live in Chicago the Sun-times probably has an on-site Ebert archive. Maybe it’s in there. Who knows. What I do know is the person that finds a copy will go down in GBfans history & lore as a Legend among legends.

Any help uncovering this mystery is greatly appreciated, I’ve been dying for YEARS to read his indepth print review. Hopefully it’s out there somewhere just waiting & yearning to be read.

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Couldn’t find a full review, did find a “Mini-Review”.

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Zed

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Wow. It’s not a full review but at last I finally know how many stars Ebert gave. Thanks a lot!! I usually found Ebert to me more fair minded in the print review rather than on the TV show, which makes sense if you think about it. But still it’s great to see.

How did you find this? Please tell me it wasn’t a simple google search away all this time? I’ve searched google countless times over the years, but have given up trying. So it would figure that when I make a post about Ebert’s GB2 review something from a Google search pops up lol.

Anyways, thanks again. I’d still love to read the entire thing but this is a great entrée before the main course. Thanks a bunch!

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Great sleuthing Zed!

By any chance, do you have more of the original page? I’d love to see the missing beginning of the Honey I Shrunk the Kids review.

Alex

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I know it puts me in the minority but I genuinely love GB2. I know it’s not “as good” as the first one but that was a fool’s errand anyway. That movie was a total masterpiece. There are still great moments in the second one and still great jokes. I just honestly don’t feel like all the hate for that movie is totally warranted.

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Thanks, Alex!

The “Honey…” review is only half a sentence longer than what I posted, see below.

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Here’s another little review snippet, with some alternate language:

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Unfortunately, I think it’s a very real possibility that a full written review doesn’t exist. You can see here that GB2 is under the column “Not Reviewed”. It is this way in all of Ebert’s columns through August 31, 1989 - then reference to it ceases altogether.

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Zed, you are a rad, rad dude. Great work!

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I do what I can :slight_smile:

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I never understood why these guys were so popular back in the day when they certainly didn’t appeal to the general public? They were essentially the rotten tomatoes of yesteryear, but I would just consider them rotten. Personally, I couldn’t stand them or their reviews. They were like the king critics whose word was official, where other critics would then parrot their viewpoint. They trashed so many great films that people consider classics today. They gave Batman 2 stars, Last Crusade 3 and a half but Parenthood got a whopping 4 stars? Ron Howard must’ve slipped them an envelope full of cash. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: “Great special effects and not much else”. Maybe the whole tagline “Siskel and Ebert give it two thumbs up.” was a good thing because they trashed everything else? More like, “Hey, even these two ■■■■■■■■ like our film so that’s saying something.” The review for Ghostbusters II even speaks for itself when he can’t even call the slime; goop. Instead he calls it “Pink ■■■■”. Should’ve proof read that one.

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[quote=910dohead post_id=4921695 time=1564680812 user_id=36345]The review for Ghostbusters II even speaks for itself when he can’t even call the slime; goop. Instead he calls it “Pink ■■■■”. Should’ve proof read that one.

[/quote]

■■■■ is another synonym for slime/goop, though. It’s just the word he chose to use.

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I need to get with it, I’ve seen every movie on the list except the best movie of 1989, Parenthood. . . When Batman and dead poets society get only 2 stars, I question your judgement

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Useless piece of trivia stuck in my brain…

There’s a rather politically incorrect joke in the 1963 stage play Barefoot in the Park by Neil Simon (possibly also in the 1967 movie, I’d have to check) which starts off with ‘■■■■’ meaning goop but then has another character mistakenly assume the racial slur definition.

Straight-laced lawyer Paul Bratter and his new mother-in-law have just returned from a miserable evening with his free-spirited bride Corey and their eccentric upstairs neighbor Victor Velasco, who took them to an Albanian restaurant on Staten Island. Via ferry. In February. They’ve just discovered that the Ouzo they’ve been drinking will leave them with no hangover, but they won’t be able to make a fist for three days.

Mother: [Corey] seems to get such a terrific kick out of living. You’ve got to admire that, don’t you, Paul?

Paul: I admire anyone who has three portions of poofla-■■■ pie.

Mother: What’s poofla-■■■ pie?

Paul: That ■■■■ that came in a turban.

Mother: I thought that was the waiter …

When I directed a production of BITF in 2003-ish, the line was already dated. I dithered over whether or not to cut it, ultimately opting to leave it in since the whole show is pretty much locked in the 60s, so we treated it as a period piece. (There are plot points involving new phones being installed in their sixth-floor walkup, and losses of communication due to cords being ripped out of the wall. I had to explain these concepts to my actors playing Paul and Corey, who were fresh out of college and had lived their entire lives with cellphones.)

I don’t think my older actress playing Mother even understood the slightly racist aspect of the line, as she almost always mis-spoke the line as “I thought it was the waiter” while falling over on the sofa tittering with laughter. This made her delivery almost unintelligible to the audience, and the line never got a laugh. Since Mother immediately takes the conversation in a new direction after that comment, it would have been a totally invisible cut to lose the line.

As for what the heck any of this has to do with Ghostbusters… well the Park in the title of Barefoot in the Park is depicted in the movie as Washington Square Park, home to the arch in GB2 where the giant stop-motion ghost peeps through. When I did my recce of GB filming locations in 2014, my host was actually the actor who had played Paul for me and was living in Brooklyn at the time, so when we were at Washington Square Park, I threw in a visit to the stoop of the nearby building used for exterior shots in BITP and we tracked down a statue in WSP that Robert Redford is seen behind, even though it had been relocated to a different area of the park in the interim.

Alex

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i love Roger..but..a star and a half for Uncle Buck?? jesus. thats probably my most quoted Candy film..and most quoted John Hughes film next to Bueller.

a recurring word he uses is “mean spirited”, he said the same thing about Batman, Beetlejuice, and Scrooged. it’s almost as if he was offended if a movie’s humor was dark or cynical, something that was on the rise in the late 80s.

despite its formulaic principal, i always found GB2 to still be funny and enjoyable. never deserving of 1 star..2 1/2 at the least. 1 star should be reserved for the cringy and unwatchable.

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Dude, show some respect. You may disagree with his opinion, and I’ve certainly questioned his sanity more than once, like when he gave Full Metal Jacket a negative review, but Roger Ebert has done more for movies and the art of film criticsm than most people ever will. He’s championed little known filmmakers into great ones, written seminal reviews for films that he LOVES and loathes.

Read his original review for Ghostbusters. Or the original review for Star Wars. Roger Ebert was a terrific writer. His negative review for the film “North” is still infamous.

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Yea i might respectfully disagree with some of his reviews but he’s still my favorite movie critic.

The endless sea of youtube schmoes that parade themselves as “movie critics” wish they had a speck of film knowledge and intelligent critique that this guy had.

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Preach it.

Ebert is by far my favourite film critic. I still go back and read old reviews of his. Or some of his blog posts during the last years of his life? Wow. I knew he was a great movie critic but those blog posts showcased how great of a storyteller and just all around terrific writer he was.

I also love that he revisited movies. His “Great Movies” section has movies he was iffy on originally and came to love over time. I’m trying to think. I know “a Christmas Story” is one, same with “Godfather Part II”. “Contact”.

Anyways even today I find myself wondering “I wonder what Roger Ebert would think” about certain movies. Would he have enjoyed the reboot? How about the new Star Wars films? Or all the Disney remakes. I’d love to see his takes.

I really miss him. It sounds silly but I almost feel like I knew him, just from reading his blogs & reviews. The world is a lesser place without him.

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Wow. Just amazing work. Thank you.

You’ve put the mystery to bed once and for all. There is no print review.

No print review is on Ebert’s site for The Abyss(!?!) Turner & Hooch or GB2 so there must not be a print review. Makes you wonder why? He clearly reviewed GB2 on the show. He saw it. It was a MASSIVE movie. He reviewed Batman, Indiana Jones..but no Ghostbusters 2? what the heck? Maybe Columbia didn’t arrange a screening in time? Weird.

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Hard to trust any critic due to the range & volume of movies they see. Movie like Die Hard , Rambo , fast furious, dumb & dumber, kinda like them or hate them and know what to expect. That’s why trust the public review, more likely to be judged by fans of that specific genre.

Just seen he gave police academy 0 stars

I think Ghostbusters fan critics might fall into the HIMYM " Ewok divide" I was barely 4 when I saw GB2 and loved it, but I can see anyone 10 and over being disappointed. Even more so if you were too old to watch RGB

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Some of the stuff he said about Ghostbusters 2 is a bold-faced lie. No invention or imagination? Did he even watch the movie? It had an underground river of psychomagnetheric “mood” slime (I suppose that’s been done before too?), slime blowers (or “■■■■ squirters” as he would doubtless call them), and a laundry list of other new gadgets, concepts, and set pieces. He seems to be forgetting that a sequel, by definition, is necessarily unoriginal, but Ghostbusters 2 does far better than most at adding fresh ideas.

I can appreciate Roger Ebert’s passion for cinema and his championship of certain filmmakers, like Werner Herzog, but at the end of the day he was a pretentious party pooper, and in many cases on the wrong side of history. Dead Poets Society is a ■■■■■■ masterpiece and he only gave it two stars? Scandalous! And he notoriously bashed Blue Velvet, another masterpiece, which has since become one of the great American films from one of the great American auteurs, David Lynch. Frankly, I think Gene Siskel had – albeit slightly – better taste.

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Same here, when he passed, i felt as if i heard I’ve lost one of my favorite school teachers. The “Life Itself” doc left me a little teary eyed.

I’d love for both him and Gene to be around to critique current corporate and franchise-obsessed state of Hollywood these days, they used to have a lot of op-ed episodes like that back in the day. There’s one that was focused primarily on “Bill Murray” and how he is our modern day Groucho, comparing and contrasting their style of wit and charisma.

you used to be able to watch all the full episodes; 1970s-1990s (no commercials..but complete with commercial break slates and countdowns) on a site called, siskelandebert.org…its no longer with us. it existed a few years ago. I used to like watching their Oscar predictions and ‘best ofs’