Plot
After being initially hailed as heroes for saving New York City from Gozer{.wikilink} five years earlier, the Ghostbusters were sued by numerous city and state agencies for the property damage at 55 Central Park West. A judge issued a restraining order barring them from investigating the supernatural, forcing them out of business. Ray Stantz{.wikilink} owns an occult bookstore and co-operates with Winston Zeddemore{.wikilink} as unpopular children's entertainers, wearing their old Ghostbuster uniforms; Egon Spengler{.wikilink} works in a laboratory at Columbia University, conducting experiments into human emotion; Peter Venkman{.wikilink} hosts a little-watched pseudo-psychic television show named "World of the Psychic"; and Dana Barrett{.wikilink}, having broken up with Peter years earlier, and now divorced from a subsequent marriage, works at the Manhattan Museum of Art restoring paintings and raising her infant son Oscar{.wikilink} at a new apartment. After an incident in which Oscar's baby carriage is controlled by an unseen supernatural force and drawn to a busy junction on First Avenue, Dana turns to the Ghostbusters for help, prompting an awkward reunion betwen herself and Peter. Meanwhile, Dr. Janosz Poha{.wikilink}, Dana's colleague at the art gallery, is brainwashed by the spirit of Vigo the Carpathian{.wikilink}, a seventeenth-century tyrant trapped in a painting in the gallery. Vigo orders Janosz to locate a child that Vigo can possess, thus gaining physical form upon the approaching New Year.
The Ghostbusters' investigation leads them to conclude that the supernatural presence originates from under the city streets, prompting them to illegally excavate First Avenue at the point where the baby carriage stopped. Lowered underneath, Ray discovers a river of pink slime filling an abandoned Pneumatic Transit subway line. After being ttacked by the slime after obtaining a sample, Ray accidentally causes a blackout, and the Ghostbusters are arrested. At their trial they are defended poorly by Louis Tully{.wikilink} (who acts as their lawyer in repaying them for having saved him in the earlier film). They are found guilty, ordered to pay a $75,000 fine, and sentenced to 18 months at Rikers Island; however, the judge's angry outburst at sentencing prompts the slime sample presented as evidence to release the ghosts of two murdering brothers{.wikilink} whom the judge had previously sentenced to death by electric chair. The team dons their proton packs{.wikilink} once again and trap the ghosts in exchange for the dismissal of all charges and the rescinding of the restraining order; having done so, they recommence their Ghostbusting business, busier and even more successful than ever.
After the slime invades Dana's apartment, seemingly to abduct Oscar, she seeks refuge with Peter, and the two begin to renew their relationship. Investigating the slime and the history of the painting of Vigo, the Ghostbusters discover that the slime reacts both to positive and negative emotions and even "dances" to music, but suspect that it has been generated by the bad attitudes of New Yorkers. While Peter and Dana have dinner together and Louis and Janine{.wikilink} babysit Oscar (becoming enamoured with each other in the process), Egon, Ray, and Winston explore the underground river of slime. While measuring the depth, Winston gets pulled into the flowing river, giving Ray and Egon no choice but to jump in after him. When they escape back to the surface (at the museum) Ray and Winston begin arguing, but Egon realizes it is because they are drenched in negatively-charged slime. In only their long underwear and dripping in slime Egon, Ray, and Winston go to the restaurant where Peter and Dana are eating, talking loudly and causing a major disturbance. Egon, Ray, and Winston are carried out of the restaurant by police.
The Ghostbusters go to the mayor with their suspicions, but are dismissed; whereupon his scheming assistant Jack Hardemeyer{.wikilink} attempts to have them committed to a psychiatric hospital to protect the mayor's interests. As they are committed, a spirit resembling a Mary Poppins-like version of Janosz kidnaps Oscar from Peter's apartment, prompting Dana to break into the museum by herself; whereupon the museum is covered by impenetrable slime.
New Year's Eve sees a sudden increase of supernatural activity as the slime, rapidly increasing in volume in the subway line, rises through the ground and onto the surface of the city, causing a demon to invade Washington Square Park; a fur coat returning to life to attack its owner; a film monster bursting out of a movie screen at a movie theatre; and the arrival of a ghostly RMS Titanic and its long-deceased passengers and crew in the harbor. Realizing the truth of the situation after having spent the night talking to the ghost of former mayor Fiorello La Guardia, the present mayor fires Jack and has the Ghostbusters released, whereupon they approach the museum. Their initial attempts to enter are unsuccessful, the wave of negativity that has generated it proving too powerful to penetrate it with their proton packs. Determining that they need a symbol of equally-powerful positivity to break through the slime, the Ghostbusters use positively-charged mood slime from their slime blowers{.wikilink}, an adapted NES Advantage Controller, and a remix of Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher" to animate the Statue of Liberty and pilot it through the streets of New York, using its torch to break through the museum's ceiling to attack Vigo and Janosz.
Janosz is easily defeated by being sprayed with positively-charged slime; but Vigo immobilizes the Ghostbusters and attempts a transfer into Oscar's body, whereupon a joyful chorus of "Auld Lang Syne" from outside the building weakens him sufficiently to free the Ghostbusters and return him to the painting. Vigo momentarily possesses Ray; whereupon the other Ghostbusters attack him with a combination of proton streams and positively-charged mood slime. Dressed in full Ghostbusters attire, Louis (who caught a ride on bus commandeered by Slimer{.wikilink}) attacks the weakened slime barrier around the building with a proton stream of his own. This combination destroys Vigo and changes the painting to a likeness of the four Ghostbusters surrounding baby Oscar. The movie ends with the Ghostbusters receiving a standing ovation from the crowd and, at a later ceremony on Liberty Island to restore the Statue, the Key to the city from the mayor.
References
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{{Ghostbusters II}}
