by Nick Ferro, Contributing Writer
When a new Ghostbusters movie is coming out, who ya gonna call? Me! The first two Ghostbusters films are some of my favorites of all time, ranking at numbers nine and 39, respectively, on my top 200. I even liked Ghostbusters: Afterlife as a solid “rebootquel” to a 30-year-old franchise. Afterlife certainly has its problems, as it’s a little too precious about callbacks, and it takes too much time to catch the main characters up to speed with what the audience is already aware. But that aside, it is a faithful continuation of the Ghostbuster mythos. There was no reason for me not to be very excited for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. But even as excited as I was, I had some concerns going in. It felt like a quick turnaround between movies. It was also a little weird to me that a lot of the first trailer appeared to be the third act conflict. And to cap off my concerns, this is once again a movie produced by Sony, who, to me, has had a terrible track record of producing movies that are well crafted, fun, and not overly interfered with by executives. Save for the Spider-Verse films, I haven’t loved anything franchise-related they’ve produced in quite a long time. But alas, I did my best to ignore my fears, and I walked into Ghostbusters Frozen Empire with the excitement of a child about to see one of his favorite franchises get another chance to add to his favorite movies of all time list.
Aaaaaand very quickly, the excitement was gone…
Like Gary (Paul Rudd) driving the Ecto-1 through the streets of New York, at no point does this movie pick a lane. The gist of the main story is that long ago a really powerful ice ghost/demon got trapped in a magical ball, and now it is trying to escape. When it inevitably does, the Ghostbusters need to figure out a way to defeat it before it freezes the city and maybe the world, and possibly stop it from opening a portal to the afterlife? I don’t know, and it’s clear the movie doesn’t either.
The film’s first act is insufferably long for several reasons. First, the filmmakers found a way to bring back every single main character from the first movie, even though some of them live in Oklahoma. Second, all the original Ghostbusters play a much larger role from the previous entry, in addition to the new characters introduced. Introducing and reintroducing the audience to 12 different characters takes time, but Frozen Empire’s most egregious time waster, in the first act, was what I like to call Previously On-ing. So many movies and TV shows are guilty of this trend, and I have lost all patience for it. Previously On-ing is the lazy screenwriting tactic of having characters recount the events of the previous movie or episode as a way to remind the audience of what happened. It is the most condescending way to fill or waste time, because it assumes that the audience is either too dumb to remember what happened previously or was so uninterested in previous entry that they couldn’t be bothered to watch it. Sometimes a movie can use this tactic well and lightly remind you of a character or an event just to add context. That’s unfortunately not how Frozen Empire uses it. There are back-to-back scenes where the characters tell each other what happened in the last movie. Events that they already know. Events that no normal person would need to be reminded of if they themselves experienced the events. It is maddening. 45 minutes into the movie, and they are still Previously On-ing here and there.
The next major story beat is Pheobe (Mckenna Grace), who is mad because Mayor Walter Peck (William Atherton) says she’s too young to be a Ghostbuster and benches her. While everyone is out on a call, leaving her alone to sulk, she makes friends with a ghost girl in the park, who likes to play chess (just like Egon in Afterlife). Had the movie made this relationship the main focus, there might have been some excellent opportunities for character building. But this ghost girl, Melody (Emily Alyn Lind), shows up only a handful of times in order to move the story along. What’s weird is I feel that we were presented with the safe-for-China edit of the movie because there are moments where I thought Phoebe and Melody could be headed toward a potential romantic connection. There are multiple shots and music cues that would indicate romance, but each of these scenes is edited just shy of any. This type of twist of a living person and a ghost falling in love would have been an interesting road for the movie to go down. However, being interesting was clearly not the movie’s intention, and it boils Melody down to merely being the Egon of this movie, with the same climatic results but none of the emotional payoff, because this is a character with whom we have zero connection.
Then there is the side plot where Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) is tasked with capturing Slimer, who is living in the attic. A fun premise to be sure if it amounted to anything at all. There are two minor scenes where this distraction takes place, and they’re paid off with a “Slimer ex machina” moment before he is never heard from again. Which is so weird to me, because the potential to FINALLY bring Slimer into the team as a main cast character with a personality a la The Real Ghostbusters is exactly the kind of fun this franchise could use, and it would be a great way to keep Wolfhard from being irrelevant. If these three story threads were the main focus of the movie, then there might have been something worth seeing, but they’re just three of a dozen that water down the experience to the point of boredom.
To say that Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is full of wasted talent may be the biggest understatement of 2024. How do you put Paul Rudd, Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, and James Acaster in a movie with Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and Annie Potts and have nothing but chuckle-worthy humor? These guys are all very funny and talented writers, too. How are they not given the chance to contribute to the script, which falls completely flat? At one point, Rudd’s lines consist of nothing but repeating the lyrics to the Ghostbusters theme song, and that is supposed to be the joke. I have never rolled my eyes so hard. References like that are all over the movie. It is nothing but saying the thing from the other thing and calling it a day! Callbacks to the original are cute to a degree in Afterlife; There was a 30-year gap, so it was inevitable that it would try to use nostalgia to help tell the story. The hope was that the sequel to Afterlife wouldn’t be burdened with the need to use nostalgia as a crutch. Unfortunately, not only is nostalgia used the same way for a second time, but it’s doubled down on. In addition to the endless barrage of callbacks to the original movies, commercials, and real-life merchandise from the ‘80s, the film also endlessly repeated beats from Afterlife.
The outline of Frozen Empire‘s story is almost beat-for-beat the same as Afterlife. Where the characters go, who they talk to, what they learn, and how they react are all the same, just with a new setting and slightly different circumstances. Another similarity to Afterlife is how it’s very apparent that there were a ton of rewrites and studio interference. Many scenes in the trailer didn’t end up in the final version of the movie, and four or five story threads go nowhere. Not to mention the constant use of the marketing tools that were the mini Stay Puft Marshmallow men. At one point, Murray goes from not having sunglasses (inside the firehouse), to having sunglasses, to not having them in the very next scene. It is maddening. And since we are talking about Murray, if you told me that they didn’t bother to write lines for him to say, I would 100% believe you, because everything that he says feels completely made up on the spot, like he just showed up on set one day unannounced, got into costume, and refused to leave.
But is it all bad?
…Yes, it kind of is, but I do have a couple positives. I like that for the first time since Ghostbusters 2, we get to see advancements in ghost-hunting technology, and how within the world, there is the potential for weird and silly ghosts for the team to hunt. I just wish they did so in this movie. I was a big fan of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon as a kid, and one thing that it does well is to be creative with the ghosts and the monster-of-the-week format. Afterlife set this movie up perfectly to take that premise and roll with it, so it’s really disappointing that it doesn’t do so. The movie is called Ghostbusters, and there are only two scenes of actual ghost busting: the opening, and the finale. I enjoyed most of the visuals and was never distracted by bad CGI, which nowadays is becoming all too common in bigger budget films. The film never has to use the dark to hide any of the digital effects. Something else I liked were the different types of ghosts that are introduced in the lab, character designs, and the practical puppet elements used for some of the ghosts. I want to give kudos for the production design team, because they were the only ones who understood the assignment. Lastly, I enjoyed one joke, and the answer to Venkman’s question is, “With skin.”
I loved getting to see some of these characters again, both the old guard and some of the new, but I think most of them need to be dropped moving forward. Particularly Logan Kim, Finn Wolfhard, and Celeste O’Connor’s characters, as they are given nothing to do, and just add bloat. I also don’t want the original cast to be major characters unless they are going to have a more substantial role. Keeping Winston (Ernie Hudson) and Janine (Potts) works, because they are bankrolling the team, but they have to share screen time with Ray and Venkman. Oh, and maybe if the cast is trimmed down, Carrie Coon would actually get something to do and have a reason to be there. She was one of my favorite parts of Afterlife, and is criminally underused in Frozen Empire. The possibilities are endless when it comes to what can be done with this franchise, but it’s stuck in a loop, repeating the same beats because the people behind it are incapable of creativity.
It frustrates me to no end to have to so negatively review a franchise I love so much. I was able to look past the flaws of Afterlife, because at the end of the day, it had the structure of a movie. Frozen Empire is a mish-mash of random scenes bouncing all over the place until it’s gone on long enough for the screenwriters to allow the third act villain to escape. It is hardly a story, let alone an entertaining one. My kids didn’t even have fun watching it. My hope is that if Sony tries to continue in this universe that they seek out fresh talent behind the camera who have a reverence for the source material, but want to make something new, not remake the same thing again and again and again.
Rating: Didn’t Like It
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is currently playing in theaters
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