Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge (2001)
The Cromwell clan lives in the real world, except for their grandmother who lives in Halloweentown, a place where monsters go to escape reality. But now the son of the Cromwells' old enemy Kalabar has a plan to use the grandmother's book to turn Halloweentown into a grey dreary version of the real world while transforming the denizens of the real world into monsters.
Watch Trailer
Cast
Similar titles
Reviews
Highly Overrated But Still Good
Admirable film.
Absolutely the worst movie.
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
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
***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I ran into this movie while waiting to go do something else. After about an hour I got caught up in this silly movie and had to see it through. I can get caught up in a made-for-TV movie for some reason and actually enjoy it but hate a full-blown big name movie with a better plot, I guess it's the lack of an expectation or something. The effects were good, pretty much close to what you'd see in a TV drama with lots of effects. Some of the strange looking people of Halloweentown have makeup good enough to appear in a modern scifi show while others look like they're wearing a cheap big rubber mask. All-in-all, the effects are definately good enough for kids. The plot? OK, not spectacular but alright for a child's movie but the cast really carries this movie, you actually LIKE the characters. SPOILER ALERT: Defeating the villian involves time travel, a plot device which is just asking for plot holes. The main purpose of the movie is to defeat the villian by midnight otherwise the Piper family can't get back home...but if you can travel in time the time constrant is meaningless! If you can travel back in time why bother beating the villian after they've done their evil deed? Why not just go back in time and stop them from doing what they did? I guess I'm thinking to hard over this kiddie movie but it's OK.
I'm really not sure how I wound up watching this one; After all, I despised the first movie. But somehow I always wind up watching the Disney Channel. And I have to say that I was really impressed by this one! It was just... different than the first. I thought the characters were more developed, and they weren't acting like idiots. And the plot... wow, this one actually had a plot.
This was a nice sequel to Halloweentown. The plot was engaging. The acting was just as good as the first one. The villain was amusing, yet not sugar-coated. The character development from the first one to the sequel was VERY well done. No being a big fan of TV movie sequels I was pleasantly surprised.Bottom line... if you liked Halloweentown... you like Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge.