Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

I'll come clean and say that Ghostbusters isn't the franchise for me. I am not a fan of the original film and to be honest I don't think it holds up great. I don't hate any of the movies and have enjoyed them all to some degree. But usually I am underwhelmed. Frozen Empire falls into that category for me too. I am happy I saw it but it doesn't do that much for me. 

This film leans even more into the nostalgia than the last. While Afterlife attempted to tell a very different sort of Ghostbusters story set in a different environment, Empire throws us back into everything familiar (NYC in general but even more specifically, the Library, the firehall, Slimer, the Stay Pufts, even Peck!). I think if I was more of a devoted fan I would have loved seeing all these callbacks. Probably the thing I enjoyed most of these was seeing Annie Potts in the uniform. 

But for me where these films fall down is that I usually don't find much of the humour that funny (and Empire is on par with the other films for that) nor the ghosts very scary. In fact the way this franchise interprets the concept of ghosts never quite sits right with me nor does the way this series just pulls solutions out of the characters' assess most of the time without actually setting up any realistic set of rules for how spirits work and how to defeat them. But that's just me...

Generally I'll give the film credit for keeping its story tight and moving it along so that I never got bored. I will take away points for teasing a queer relationship for Grace's character but never having the strength to actually go there. It gets points for Nanjiani's character being somewhat entertaining but loses some for seeming to just want to throw in as many characters as possible without really giving them a reason to be there. So for me Frozen Empire was a mixed bag that I can like enough to just not be that impressed. What I'd really like to see is them do next is let Grace really be the star of this show and get her going off to fight ghosts in new and strange locations with a small rotating team of busters that could breath some life into this without just returning to the same few stock ideas each time. 

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

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

Director: Gil Kenan

Writers: Jason Reitman, Gil Kenan