Review: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

The Spengler family (Carrie Coon, kids McKenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard, and partner Paul Rudd) are now New Yorkers and their ghost busting antics have earned the attention of the one and only Dickless, I mean former EPA inspector Walter Peck (William Atherton) who is now the city’s mayor. He’s utterly bemused and threatens to shut the operation down, before Coon offers to stand Grace down for being underage. Grace is upset but finds a new friend in Emily Alyn Lind, whom she quickly realises is a ghost. Meanwhile, original ghostbuster Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) unwittingly unleashes a paranormal evil when opening a brass ball artefact. Ray…what did you do? Annie Potts, Ernie Hudson, and eventually Bill Murray turn up to reprise their franchise roles. British comedian James Acaster is here because the film was partly filmed in the UK and they wanted to qualify for tax relief. He plays the head of a paranormal research and development centre. Kumail Nanjiani turns up as the guy who sells Ray the brass orb, and eventually becomes a significant player in the plot. Patton Oswalt has a small role as a librarian and anthropologist.

 

I enjoyed the previous “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” just fine. It’s not the original “Ghostbusters” – nothing else can touch it – and I didn’t find it overly funny. However, so far as ‘legacy sequels’ go, it was entertaining. This 2024 follow-up from director Gil Kenan (the underrated 2015 version of “Poltergeist”, co-writer of the aforementioned “Afterlife”) and screenwriters Jason Reitman (who directed the previous film) and Kenan is pretty solid too. I might even place it slightly higher simply for being funnier than “Afterlife”. However, there’s some lumps and bumps along the way here which had me a bit worried that I wasn’t liking this film so much for a little while there.

 

The film doesn’t get off to the best start, with a corny, Stephen Sommers-ish pre-credits opener that has too much emphasis on CGI and jump scares. The entire film is a bit too reliant on the latter whereas the original 1984 film really only had two big ones. It also feels like there’s a lot of box-checking going on to make sure every demographic is covered to maximise audience and therefore product. I don’t normally care about that sort of thing – it’s called the movie business after all – but here it’s blatant very early on. In theory I like the idea of the family ghost-busting dynamic, but I was unable to see past the monetary/marketing motivation behind it because it was very much front and centre and felt calculated rather than a genuine part of the fabric. That also includes the callbacks to the original to rope in the middle-aged people like me. It’s cynical and I wasn’t having much fun with it, unlike the previous film. Even the cameo by ‘Dickless’ (William Atherton’s Walter Peck) is botched because Atherton looks bored and shares zero comedic chemistry with the new cast. The veteran character actor also seems out of breath every time he opens his mouth.

 

The musical cues work a bit better, and thankfully Paul Rudd is once again back. He works perfectly, suggesting “Cannibal Girls” for a family movie night being a wonderfully left-field comedic bit. He and Carrie Coon are immensely likeable on screen, and after a slow, clunky start the film started to fire up. What I particularly love about Coon is that she’s doing real acting and is seemingly in a real movie instead of a CGI-laden, jump scare obsessed cinematic ghost train legacy sequel. Sure, she’s in a cinematic ghost train legacy sequel, but she helps ground things to some extent and I found a lot of her scenes a real – and beneficial – relief. You need some kind of break from the ghostly mayhem here and there and she brings that. Dan Aykroyd’s Ray Stantz becoming a paranormal YouTuber pushing for likes and subscribes is genuinely hilarious, and Kumail Nanjiani is a constant scene-stealer even if his role is Rick Moranis by another name. The tiny Marshmallow Men are back and although obviously merchandising, they’re awesome. Annie Potts gets more to say and do this time around which is lovely, and Ernie Hudson has such a likeable, dependable presence that I always love seeing him on screen as the voice of reason who just wants a quiet retirement. I’m glad that he and Aykroyd are in this a lot more than in the previous film.

 

Bill Murray is another story, and requires a short paragraph all of his own. Bill Murray and Peter Venkman are one and the same in terms of screen presence, we all know that. However, this is the laziest version of that. It’s simply a coasting Bill Murray gliding in, saying his lines, collecting his money and gliding out. He’s here for money and obligation and it’s obvious for all to see. I know a lot of actors do this – you need to pay the bills of course – but again, as with the box-checking, do you need to make it so damn obvious that what you’re doing?

 

McKenna Grace really comes into her own in this one and she has terrific chemistry with Emily Alyn Lind. Some critics have referred to the relationship between Emily Alyn Lind and McKenna Grace’s characters as a lesbian romance, and the treatment of said relationship seems to have ruffled feathers on both sides of the aisle for different reasons. I myself was wary. For a while I was set to chastise the filmmakers for falling into one of the oldest, most homophobic tropes for gay representation on screen. If you’ve seen “The Celluloid Closet” you’ll know what trope I’m referring to. Having seen the entire film not only do they ultimately steer slightly clear of that direction for Lind’s character, there’s also so very little hint of a romance between the two characters featured on screen that…actually, I’m not even 100% sure that there were any gay or bi characters in the film. That’s how subtle the entire angle is portrayed on screen, I’m kind of perplexed as to why it was such a talking point in the online space on the film’s original release. Much ado about possibly nothing at all.

 

It becomes obvious quite quickly that we’re juggling way too many characters here, many of them uninteresting and unnecessary. James Acaster, in addition to only ever being funny once in his life (As a panellist on one episode of “Would I Lie to You?”), is entirely extraneous here. The film is funny, he’s allegedly a comedian, yet he’s not given anything funny to say or do here. OK, so why is he here clogging up the narrative? It should’ve just been the family, the original crew (Janine included) and the ghosts. The majority of the rest of the characters are unhelpful clutter, though unlike the previous film at least the villains are original here. In fact, the chief villain looks awesome, if not being overly enthralling as a character. That unnecessary clutter, by the way, includes John Rothman returning as the library administrator for the first time since 1984. This of course means we get the return of the best jump scare from the first film – the library ghost, which is admittedly cute. It still doesn’t need to be here. I do however wholeheartedly approve of the bit where the Ghostbusters car gets possessed and looks demonic. That was great. And of all the simple pleasures in life, hearing the iconic car siren is definitely one of them.

 

A pretty solid follow-up which avoids a couple of pitfalls, but would’ve been even stronger if streamlined. There’s too many unnecessary additions to an already fairly stacked cast. At least the laughs are there this time. If you take out the 2016 standalone reboot (which I didn’t hate or like), this franchise hasn’t produced a poor film yet even though the original stands yards ahead of the rest.

 

Rating: B-