GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Mark Reviews Movies

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Columbia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 21, 2024

Thankfully, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire remembers that it's supposed to be a comedy first, which can't be said of its immediate predecessor. After all, Ghostbusters: Afterlife was so reverential to the 1984 original that it basically held it in a strange sort of awe that didn't allow for much humor. Plus, that belated sequel/reboot introduced two new generations of Ghostbusters but seemed more interested in the legacy of their forebears to make the new characters matter.

This one, co-written and directed by Gil Kenan, starts with a little promise in regards to the new team—a blended family of sorts, made up of the daughter and grandkids of one of the original Ghostbusters and a man who desperately wants to become an official or even just an unofficial part of the family. Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon), her two kids Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), and her boyfriend Gary (Paul Rudd) have moved from rural Oklahoma to New York City, taken over the old fire station where Callie's dad and his ghost-hunting partners worked, and restarted the business.

After a prologue hinting at the main threat of this new installment, the screenplay by Kenan and Jason Reitman (who directed the previous movie) cuts right to the action, the humor, and the sense that this quartet can work as a team to catch ghosts, while bickering and bantering along the way. It's not much, to be honest, and the story eventually has just as many problems trying to figure out what to do with the newer characters while still giving the spotlight the original ones. Still, the momentary flash of some camaraderie and comedic chemistry among the new team suggests this passing of the baton might eventually work.

The problem is that these two movies have the distinct generations of characters wrestling over the baton, instead of just making a clear choice about which group matters to this new string of stories. Yes, it's still nice to be once again reunited with Ray Stantz (Dan Akroyd), Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), and Peter Venkman (Bill Murray)—not to mention the team's secretary Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts). That's especially true since the three surviving main actors from the original film and its sequel are obviously having fun. There's a scene here in which Ray and Winston talk about how they should be spending their golden years, and we can't help but feel the sincerity Akroyd brings to the assertion that hunting ghosts is exactly what Ray wants to be doing, because he loves it more than anything else.

Another problem is that the previous movie already pulled this sentimental trick of bringing back the old team for another adventure (even going so far as to digitally re-create the late Harold Ramis in a scene that probably should have been distasteful, except for how genuinely affecting it was). This one plays the second reunion right, perhaps, in letting the three old-timers play their characters throughout the story, instead of just springing them all and their sardonic humor on us at the last minute.

That's assuming, of course, that the new characters need the older ones in the first place. In theory, they don't, but because the filmmakers refuse to let go of the past, here are Akroyd, Hudson, and Murray again, more directly preventing the next generations from taking over the spotlight.

The whole movie feels divided as a result, and that goes beyond the generational divides, too. After the opening action sequence, the members of the makeshift family of Ghostbusters go their separate ways. Fifteen-year-old Phoebe finds a connection with a teenaged ghost named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind) whom she meets in Central Park. The girl has been wondering what it would be like to be a ghost, and here's her chance to find out—in more ways than just asking questions.

Meanwhile, Callie and Gary have to decide what role he wants and should have as a parental figure to her kids, and Trevor has some gags involving a familiar slimy ghost that has taken up residence in the attic. If this is the best Kenan and Reitman can imagine for these characters, maybe it is for the best that the original stars have returned.

Ray is key to the eventual plot, after receiving an ancient spectral trap of sorts from Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani), who found the mysterious sphere in a secret, brass-covered room in the apartment of his recently deceased grandmother. Its housing a particularly nasty spirit, capable of killing by fear, although it mainly appears capable of quickly freezing things and people. Winston and Peter eventually get in on the action, too, after the ghost containment unit in the fire station reaches its full capacity, threatening to unleash an army of ghosts on the city.

If all of this sounds familiar, it basically is, and at a certain point, the movie's reliance on nostalgia, continued from the last entry, stops feeling like adoration. It starts to come across as desperation, because Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire simply cannot let go of the past, making us wonder what the point of the franchise's present is and if it actually deserves a future.

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