Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

By: Mike Ward on Thursday, March 21

PG-13 Running Time: 115 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

Those who liked the 2021 reboot, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, will likely find much of the same enjoyment, if not more, this time around.
Mixes nostalgia with current world-building to bring together two audiences old and new.
Doesn’t take itself too seriously and is simply trying to have fun along with its audience. Not everything lands, but there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

NO

However, if nothing funny or amusing lands for you - this will be a very long viewing experience.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife made a surprising amount of money, enough to greenlight Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. However, I think we have sufficiently busted all the ghosts we need to and perhaps we should consider shutting this Ghostbusters franchise down for an undefined period of time.
Amusing and entertaining enough, it is really a nothing-burger of a movie. I am ambivalent about it and honestly, that lack of feeling anything about it is kind of problematic.

OUR REVIEW

Embracing nostalgia and trying to chart a new course, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire seems to want to have the best of both worlds. Writers Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman would love to have audiences young and old find moments that both connect the Ghostbusters experience to the past and present, while creating distinct and unique memories. After all, it was 40 years ago that Ghostbusters was a cultural touchpoint and a household name, with a massive hit song, quotable dialogue and tremendous box office and groundbreaking visual effects.

I don’t think we have come anywhere close with recapturing that magic this time around. After rebooting the franchise with the lackluster 2021 effort, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Kenan and Reitman have returned for the sequel. While a notable improvement in terms of entertainment value, Frozen Empire is a film that leaves you feeling amused and entertained enough. You certainly may laugh and chuckle along the way, perhaps flinch on a couple jump scares. Older viewers may even smile at the mix of nostalgia intertwined with a modernized story. But as soon as the movie ends, or perhaps even during long stretches of it, you might just find your mind wandering and thinking about anything other than what is playing before you on screen.

With that said, why would I recommend the film even passively? Because if you do engage with it and you do spend some time with it - it’s kind of fun. Light-hearted. Paul Rudd gives great line readings and there’s a nicely written, rather bittersweet subplot involving teenager Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and a ghostly apparition named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind). We also have Kumail Nanjiani trying to do what he can with terrific comedic timing, while former Ghostbusters alumni like Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, and Annie Potts are clearly having fun.

Kenan, as director, sets us back in the heart of New York City, and back at the firehouse where the original Ghostbusters set up shop. The Ghostbusters are now the work of the Spengler family and Gary Grooberson (Rudd), the Oklahoma school teacher turned ghost buster. As it turns out, Gary is the one driving the legendary Ghostbusters vehicle to call after call, while also trying to make sure his partner Callie (Carrie Coon) and her kids Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe are supporting her and not doing anything to harm the family business.

After one attempted containment leads an old foe of the Ghostbusters team, Mayor Peck (Walter Atherton), to tell Callie and Gary that Phoebe, at 15, is too young to participate in their ghostbusting pursuits, he renews his decades-long effort to shut the Ghostbusters down for good. It doesn’t take very long to see that Phoebe is going to rebel against the notion of “being too young,” Gary is going to try and be a father figure without quite being a father figure, Callie will be caught in the middle of things, and Trevor will not really have much to do.

A subplot involving Aykroyd is introduced and funnels much of the nostalgia into the fabric of the movie. This is accomplished through Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore now acting as financier of a high tech research lab, which carries some familiar faces into Frozen Empire from Afterlife. This also is the means with which Aykroyd gets to espouse scientific theory and problem solve ideas, as Murray utters one-liners and chews much of the scenery around him.

If it sounds as if I am largely dismissive of the movie, I am not. There’s fun in watching Aykroyd get a role this big again in a story he clearly has affinity for. Kenan and Reitman may be credited as writers, but there’s a sense that Nanjiani, for example, was ad-libbing and riffing in his role as Nadeem, an heir who is trying to profit off of everything his grandmother left behind.

His ownership of the mystical Orb of Garraka is the catalyst in driving the suspenseful, supernatural elements of the story. For those wondering what the Frozen Empire references, the Orb has your answers.

That I have buried the lede when discussing the main plot of the movie is indicative of how inconsequential and rather apathetic I am to what the Orb signifies and means.

Setting that aside however, I was chuckling along at the jokes, smiling mostly at the nostalgia, and rather enjoyed the carefree nature of things. I cannot make a case for this (or Ghostbusters: Afterlife for that matter) to exist necessarily, but I also am not mad that we have two more Ghostbusters movies dutifully paying homage and tribute to the original films.

Call me simple, I guess. Unleash whatever ghostly beasts and demons you want. If you can keep me entertained, give me a storyline I care about and don’t take any of this all that seriously, then I, in turn, will not take any of this all that seriously either.

And honestly…sometimes…that can be enough.

CAST & CREW

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

Director: Gil Kenan
Written by: Gil Kenan, Jason Reitman
Adapted from the 1984 film “Ghostbusters,” written by Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman
Release Date: March 22, 2024
Columbia Pictures

Those who liked the 2021 reboot, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, will likely find much of the same enjoyment, if not more, this time around.

Mixes nostalgia with current world-building to bring together two audiences old and new.

Doesn’t take itself too seriously and is simply trying to have fun along with its audience. Not everything lands, but there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

However, if nothing funny or amusing lands for you - this will be a very long viewing experience.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife made a surprising amount of money, enough to greenlight Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. However, I think we have sufficiently busted all the ghosts we need to and perhaps we should consider shutting this Ghostbusters franchise down for an undefined period of time.

Amusing and entertaining enough, it is really a nothing-burger of a movie. I am ambivalent about it and honestly, that lack of feeling anything about it is kind of problematic.