Now living in New York set up in the original Ghostbusters firehouse the Spengler family must save the day from an apocalyptic ghostly threat that freezes people to death.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire starts promisingly. First we have a prologue set in 1904 where we get to see the new evil that the team will face. This is then followed by a ghost catching sequence where the Spengler family can show off their new tech whilst bickering. Gary (Paul Rudd) is still very excited to be a ghostbuster, Callie (Carrie Coon) would like him to be a bit more of a father and less of a friend to her children, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) is now eighteen and thinks he should have more responsibility and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) is feeling undervalued in the team. So far, so good.
The problem though is that what follows is a turgid and unfunny procession of cameos. A film so overstuffed with ghostbusters that everything enjoyable about the previous movie is unable to find its way to the forefront. In my mostly positive review of Ghostbusters Afterlife I commended the new characters that the film took its time to introduce but was disappointed that the finale went to far into fan service robbing those characters of their agency and taking them away from centre stage. Frozen Empire does this throughout. At its finale it has no fewer than eleven people wearing a Ghostbusters uniform and more assisting in the fight against the big bad. The result is that the new Ghostbusters team have no time to make an impact in their own movie.
Overshadowing the Spengler family is the need for old hands to appear as main characters and cameos. Dan Akyroyd, Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts have lengthy appearances. Whilst Bill Murray and William Atherton have much shorter ones. The likes of Podcast (Logan Kim) and Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) from Afterlife get rather cursory appearances and then the film tries to find time to introduce Pinfield (James Acaster) and Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani) as sidekicks.
It was around the point that the film enters its endgame that I realised that not only had I not laughed once but that the opening sequence was also the only time a ghost had been chased!
When the final ghost did appear I have to say that it did at least have an air of scariness about it. Although the sort of scariness that I was glad I had not taken my youngest child to watch it at the cinema because then not only would I have made myself bored but I may have given her some bad dreams!
If Ghostbusters means a lot to you then this will probably check some boxes, but for me it would do a better job of keeping to the spirit of the originals by actually being funny and letting the new Spengler family star in their own movie.
Phil the Bear's Film Reviews 