Movie Review: ‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’

Director: Gil Kenan

Cast: Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, Celeste O’Connor, Logan Kim, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, William Atherton, James Acaster, Emily Alyn Lind

Plot: The Spengler family (and Gary) have relocated to the famous New York firehouse, home of the Ghostbusters. Before long a new menace begins growing, one that needs all Ghostbusters young, old and new to come together.

Review: Ghostbusters is, ironically, a franchise that exists in a state of limbo. Not only was the original movie a smash hit, it spawned a merchandising bonanza. Sequels, an animated series, endless action figures, soundtracks, video games, board games, it really was everywhere during the 1980s. It helped define the zeitgeist of the era. Then, after the second film, it just kinda drifted. Every now and then it will resurface with a reboot, requel, rebooted animated series or video game, but they largely just played the hits of Slimer, Stay Puft and Gozer on repeat. Now that the requel set-up is out of the way, it’s time to settle in to a big, new Ghostbuster adventure. Sort of.

Spoilers, obviously.

Our story begins with Gary (Rudd), Callie (Coon), Trevor (Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Grace) continuing their family business of busting ghosts, now out of the original firehouse. Essentially picking up where they previously left off, they’re tearing around New York and catching ghosts to the chagrin of Mayor Peck (Atherton). Things begin to escalate when Nadeem (Nanjiani) sells some of his late grandmothers effects to Ray’s (Aykroyd) occult bookstore, one of which holds an imprisoned ancient god.

Off the bat, there is some real fun to be had here. Ecto-1 tearing up the city streets continues to be iconic (no problem with all the design work from the original being used, still amazing), with the gunner seat and new drone traps adding to the excitement. Family drama comes into the fold when the mayor demands that Phoebe, being a minor, is stood down from Ghostbusting duties, and Gary trying to work out what his part in this family unit really is. We liked these characters in Afterlife, and we’re happy to see them develop further. Also a welcome technician is the expansion of the Ghostbusters operation. Winston (Hudson) has become an entrepreneur and invested into ghost-based research and containment. The best part of these scenes is how well they’ve maintained the clunky look of the home-made equipment while expanding on what it can do.

It was only a few years ago that we saw the final Jurassic World movie, one that grouped together the older and newer characters and wound up with none of them having much to do and then stood them all in a group at the end. In the above summary we mentioned the main plot thread for the Spengler family. Trevor insists that he is an adult at 18 and is thus intrusted with dealing with a ghost in the attic…none other than Slimer himself. This plays out as a cat and mouse type slapstick bit. Phoebe, meanwhile, is feeling left behind by her family, and strikes up a friendship and romance with a young spirit named Melody (Lind) with whom she is willing to test some boundaries.

But that’s not all. Gary has to accept a more important parental role with the kids. There’s also Podcast (Kim), a friend of Phoebe’s from the small town who is in the city producing online content for Ray. On that note, Ray has come into contact with a powerful item that needs investigation. Nadeem, who sold him the artefact, is a bit of a low-key grifter who must learn to use a newfound mystical link to his Grandmother. Trevor’s friend Lucky (O’Connor) has also come to the city to intern as Winston’s research centre where she tests new weapons. Venkman (Murray) also helps out at the research centre. In the same way Janine (Potts) helps out at the firehouse.

There’s a whole bunch of characters, is what we’re getting at. Because there’s also the linguistics professor at the library, Dr. Warrtzki. And the Lars, an engineer who works for Winston and handles quite a bit of hands-on ghost wrangler.

You don’t often get the sense that they spent much time in the same room together, unfortunately. This gives us a massive ensemble to get to, leaving Wolfhard’s Slimer hunt and O’Connor’s romance subplot get only two scenes apiece before things come to a head. With so many introductions getting made it feels slow to get momentum and then in a hurry to wrap things up at the end. When the big bad turns up, we’ve got almost a dozen characters facing it in a single room. Unfortunately, the frozen New York featured heavily in the marketing is largely seen from a distance with the action confined to a single room. It’s an easy fix, narrow the focus to the new characters and spend some more time on their stories. Reduce down the characters listed as ‘guest’ stars to cameo roles. They can still play a key role in the story, such as buying the artefact and starting the main story thread, but leave it at that.

In between that slow beginning and the rushed end, we do get some ghostly encounters. We has some trepidation that this would be a repeat of the hits, especially with the threat of the containment unit breaking open. Slimer does make an appearance having camped out in the firehouse ala the animated series, and there’s a cameo midway through that went on twice as long as it should have. We have a couple of new faces, including a dragon chappy, a ‘possessor’ that rapidly hops between inanimate objects and takes control of them (the escalation of this spook goes to some creative places, it’s good fun), the returning little marshmallow fellas, a scary looking toothy character we should’ve gotten more of later in the film, and the final big bad. This ancient god does have a well-realised design, and is distinct from what we’ve seen before. He also seems to be stop-motion, or animated to look stop-motion, with is a design decision that really worked.

There’s so much that we like here, and it’s got plenty of details that stood out to nerds and people nostalgic for the originals. We spotted the original ‘Ghostbusters’ sign in the attic of the firehouse, and they’ve brought despised bureaucrat Walter Peck back to be mocked. All the new research branch of the Ghostbusters business model was really fun and felt like a natural expansion of this world. All the parts work, and the cast work, but it struggles to balance everything. Gags that should have had a set-up, a callback and the punch-line skipped straight to the punch-line. It felt like there should’ve been one more scene between Phoebe and Melody, or another scene of Nadeem learning his role in everything, or another slapstick Slimer vs Wolfhard scene.

We’re still on board with these characters, but maybe the franchise needs to move forward with the ‘legacy’ characters taking a step back. Nobody really wants less Janine in these movies, but it’s for the good of the stories.

Rating: SIX out of TEN