‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’ is a shade of the original
WHATEVER element of surprise there once was in the Ghostbusters franchise has long been exorcised, but that’s okay: Hollywood assumes audiences don’t want to be surprised anymore, and it’s probably right.
The 2016 all-female Ghostbusters wasn’t half bad but got caught in the culture war’s crossfire, whereas the 2021 reboot Ghostbusters: Afterlife played like a mashup of the original 1984 film and TV’S Stranger Things, and it did well enough to spawn a sequel: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
The new film is professionally made, well-acted, entertaining enough, and possessed of no earthly reason to exist aside from the care and feeding of intellectual property.
It could be worse. Under Gil Kenan’s workmanlike direction – the screenplay is by him and Jason Reitman, son of the first film’s director, Ivan Reitman, who died in 2022 and to whom Frozen Empire is dedicated – the family from Afterlife is reassembled in New York City, in the refurbished firehouse where it all started.
Mom Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon), her sardonic son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard of Stranger Things), brainiac daughter Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and mom’s boyfriend Gary (Paul Rudd) are carrying on the ghostbusting mission of Grandpa Egon (the late Harold Ramis), bankrolled by original fourth
Ghostbuster Winston (Ernie Hudson), now a besuited Manhattan tech entrepreneur.
Where are the other two of the famous crew? Ray (Dan Aykroyd) is running a paranormal notions shop when he is visited by the shifty Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani), who is unloading his grandmother’s effects, among which is a mysterious metal orb glowing with demonic energy.
Aykroyd seems delighted to be here. That’s more than can be said for Bill Murray as Peter Venkman. Murray shows up in two scenes, punches the clock, gets his laughs, picks up his check and goes home. Which points to what’s changed in 40 years. Murray carried the original Ghostbusters on the strength of his unflappable sarcasm, turning a pretty good special-effects horror comedy into a classic of breezy, gritty New York City wit.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is less a horror comedy and more a reasonably successful pastiche of things that have worked before, and not necessarily in this series alone.
The icy eldritch god who serves as the main villain is a rehash of every CGI monster from the last 20 years.
The miniature army of Stay-puft Marshmallow men are this movie’s Minions, and, honestly, by the internal logic of the Ghostbusters universe, they shouldn’t even be here.
Wasn’t the first movie’s giant version a projection of Ray’s imagination and not an actual spectral embodiment? Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire serves as an effective, forgettable family night at the movies or in-flight time waster.
Maybe the next Ghostbusters should be a straight-to-streaming young adult same-sex rom-com. Who you gonna call? Netflix. | The Washington Post
¡ Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is
showing at cinemas nationwide.