Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge

While everyone recognizes the "High School Musical" Disney Channel original movies, that actually wasn't the most prolific Disney Channel original movie series. It's actually this lesser known one called "Halloweentown". The title is quite misleading as Kalabar doesn't even appear in this. He died in the last one and actually stayed dead. This movie instead tells the story of his son trying to get revenge by turning the inhabitants of the monster world into humans and vice versa. The monochrome effects are done quite well.

The downside is that we don't get to see many of the monsters and they usually just stay in the same location. I haven't seen the first film in ages, but I at least remember that it was more creative with more variety. These movies are by no means great, but I'd still choose them over the "High School Musical" films. Okay, that's not much of a compliment but at least they made more of them. The grandmother Aggie is probably the most likeable character. Apart from being a witch, she's depicted very realistically. **1/2

Now, I've seen some pretty bad sequels in my day, but this one was just plain terrible!!!!! The acting was worse, the story was lame, and Kimberly J. Brown really grates my cheese. She can't act!!!!!! I hated this one, the first one may not have been Oscar material, but it was a hell of a lot better. Did anyone else realize that they had a completely different looking Halloweentown? That was a pretty dumb mistake. I guess the thing that really got me too was that the ending was almost the same as the first, Marnie stands up to the big bad using her own will power... how tacky. This movie gets a 1/10

I just saw this film and really enjoyed it, I am now going to try to find the first one from somewhere. I recommend this film to anyone of all ages and whatever religion. I really enjoyed all the characters and thought that Dylan was funny and Sophie and even better character.

I've not seen the first film so I can't comment on what other people have said regarding the plot line's similarity to the first.

I found this film interesting though. It's clearly aimed at kids and I think that kids would find it entertaining. I have to admit the plot didn't completely make sense, and there were some parts that just made no sense at all. But I suppose that the target audience probably wouldn't be too worried about the inconsistencies.

The plot centres around the granny witch's spellbook which is stolen and used to place a 'grey spell' on halloweentown, turning the town listless and uninteresting (although I found the 'boring' characters more entertaining than the lively ones, I never thought seeing someone sort socks would amuse me so much). The young witch then has to attempt to regain the book despite not seeming to know her arse from her elbow.

At no point in the film was I bored but I was slightly annoyed by the ending given that it was something she could easily have done at the start of the film.

In total I'd give this film 6/10 allowing for the fact it's not aimed at me, and young kids would probably enjoy it.

I usually like weird, kind of dark movies but this one was just... cheesy. The acting was pretty bad, even for amateurs. The script was all too obvious, the plot had potential but bad costuming and set design ruined it all. Many of the ideas seemed stolen (i.e. doesn't Halloweentown sound at all familiar, hmmm? Or the idea of wizard school?) Overall it was a pretty boring movie. Many lines were meant to be funny but just...weren't. It wasn't even bad in a good, funny way, just bad in a torturous fakey, boring way. Overall I would not suggest this movie unless you want your IQ to be lowered. But it might be o.k. for really little kids who just want a fun movie.