They’re back on familiar ground in this one—maybe too familiar. The temptation to walk across previously trodden territory proved too much to resist for this flick's cast and crew; a lot of the running time is dedicated to retracing steps from earlier entries, and not always successfully. That decision seems to have discouraged everyone from breaking off in fresh, new directions, as we saw in this film’s immediate predecessor, and that probably contributed to many of the jokes in this latest outing falling flat. That’s not to say there are no laughs to be had here, just that they are fewer and further between, and more gentle chuckles than laugh-out-loud moments. Indeed, this movie actually plays a bit better if you take its story a bit more seriously, as a supernatural action adventure pic rather than the straight-up comedy the ancestral movie was. The real star here and source of the movie’s heart and soul, as she was in the previous film, is McKenna Grace; her precocious Phoebe Spengler carries much of the story’s weight while the grownups around her are mostly goofing around. I guess I may be grading on a curve here, when this flick's antecedents achieved genius status, but while this latest in the series is not quite what it could have been, it still delivers more than enough entertainment to make it worth a look. You just have to get in the spirit, as it were, to get the most out of your viewing experience.
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