‘Ghostbusters Frozen Empire’ Review – Time to Call Someone Else

The Big Picture

• Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
  relies heavily on nostalgia, squeezing in references that don’t add to the new story.
• The film struggles to balance old and new characters, resulting in excessive cameos and callbacks.
• Despite some fun new additions,
  Frozen Empire
  dwells too much in the past instead of telling a fresh story.

Ever since the first Ghostbusters was released in 1984, any attempt to return to this world has relied heavily on nostalgia and diminishing returns, creating a phantasm of what used to be. 1989’s Ghostbusters II couldn’t live up to the original, even with the same team behind it. 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife continuously asked the audience to remember how much they enjoyed the first film instead of caring about the movie they were currently watching. At least 2016’s Ghostbusters tried something new, hitting more on the archetypes than directly recreating the original too much.

While not nearly as egregious as Afterlife, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire continues this trend in exhausting fashion, reminding the audience that forty years ago, there was a movie called Ghostbusters that they enjoyed and this isn’t it—despite how many references and cameos they can shove in. Frozen Empire attempts to evoke the past with constant callbacks, while trying to make the audience care about a more modern story with characters for a new generation, and ends up failing on both counts.

What Is ‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’ About?

Frozen Empire finds the Spengler family—Callie (Carrie Coon), her son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), her daughter Phoebe (McKenna Grace), and Callie’s boyfriend/former science teacher Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd)—having moved from Oklahoma to New York City, where they now live in the Ghostbusters firehouse. They work together as the new Ghostbusters, but after a ghost chase leaves a mess in NYC, the 15-year-old Phoebe gets sidelined as part of the team.

It couldn’t happen at a worse time, as Phoebe starts hanging out with a ghost (Emily Alyn Lind), the containment center for ghosts and the firehouse is about ready to burst with 40 years of ghosts about to pop out, and a new artifact sold by newcomer Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani) to Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) could be the key to the resurgence of an ancient evil. Amongst all of this, Winston (Ernie Hudson) has created a new ghost research lab, complete with new ghosts and gadgets, Gary is struggling with his position as a potential guardian to Callie’s kids, and there’s just a whole mess of old and new characters doing their own thing and occasionally popping in to remind that, hey, they’re still around!

Gil Kenan Is a Decent Choice to Direct ‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’

Director Gil Kenan takes over the series, and despite a spotty filmography, he’s not a terrible choice for a job (and certainly makes more sense as a director than Jason Reitman did). Kenan’s debut, 2006’s Monster House, had a similar tone to Ghostbusters, finding a great mixture of comedy and horror that seems just like it’s pushing the line of how creepy a film for kids can be. Kenan does an admirable job of bringing that sensibility to Frozen Empire, especially with creature designs that seem borderline too much for a younger audience. The film might not have the most dynamic look, but in terms of the tenor of the film, Kenan manages to find where this story needs to be.

However, the screenplay, written by Kenan and Jason Reitman, feels like two stories slammed together. While the old Ghostbusters and the new Ghostbusters do team up, their interactions are fairly unnecessary, and it’s as if they’re both in their own stories, neither of which really needs the other. If anything, it’s the actions of the Ghostbusters time and time again—both OGs and The New Class—that get the world into sticky situations to begin with. After the direct references of Afterlife, Frozen Empire also relies on cameos and jokes that will mostly only work for people who have the original film ingrained in their minds. And even with the new crew, references to the previous film don’t feel essential. Rather, it’s as though they’re also trying to build nostalgia for merely three years ago. For example, the miniature Stay-Puft marshmallows are back to be adorable and serve no purpose, while characters like Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) and Podcast (Logan Kim) are shoehorned into the story of the Spengler family.

This split between the old and the new means that both sides suffer. Like the last film, Rudd and Coon are charming together but are rarely the center of attention, and while Wolfhard does get some fun moments with Slimer, the Spengler side of things is narrowed in on Grace’s Phoebe and her new ghost friend. On the other hand, whenever the older Ghostbusters appear, it’s as though they’re glorified cameos, played like they’re waiting for the audience to start clapping simply at their presence. Quite literally, every time Bill Murray shows up as Peter Venkman, it’s almost treated like a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live. None of the original cast is given much to do, other than to exist and depend on goodwill from the original film to help elevate this one. At least they left the Harold Ramis ghost in the last film.

The New Cast Additions in ‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’ Are Pleasant Surprises

Yet despite now having a cast that is packed with characters from those first two films and now the characters from Afterlife, Frozen Empire does introduce some fun new additions. Nanjiani is a delight as a man who is thrown into this world of ghosts and spirits, while James Acaster’s dry humor as a researcher in Winston’s lab is a nice balance to the other senses of humor found in the film. Patton Oswalt is also a pleasant surprise as a librarian leading this cast in the right direction, turning what could’ve been a character solely existing for exposition’s sake into a fun yet essential part of the story. This might be cramming too much into a cast already struggling to keep things straight, but again, it proves that focusing on the present in these films works better than relying on the past.

But ‘Ghostbusters’ Needs to Move Beyond Nostalgia

This isn’t to say that Frozen Empire is a disaster—not at all. It’s for sure a step up from Afterlife shoving that original film down the audience’s throat at every turn, but it’s that continued decision to constantly try to bring up the past instead of focusing more on telling a new story that ends up hurting this latest film. Simply showing a character, making a somewhat similar joke, or even recreating a scene from the first film isn’t helping this one in any way. It’s lazy and only reminds the audience that they’re not watching that original film instead. Granted, any new Ghostbusters film is going to live in the shadows of that first film, but Afterlife and Frozen Empire seem content to relax in that shadow and let it do the heavy lifting.

In a weird way, Frozen Empire isn’t just packed with nostalgia for 1984’s Ghostbusters, but also for 2021’s Afterlife as well. It’s like Ghostbusters is going Inception-like into layer after layer of nostalgia, as it wants us to remember the film that was also about remembering another film. Like Afterlife, Frozen Empire is a film stuck between creating its own ideas, while also showing reverence to a film that came out 40 years ago. However, Frozen Empire ends with enough of its own concepts and characters that it hopefully leaves the past in the past going forward. Ghostbusters has always been an exciting concept, and there’s a great cast here to bring this series into the modern day without having to rely on winks and nudges. Despite it’s flaws, it’s hard to not admire 2016’s Ghostbusters for taking this world and running with it, while creating some of its own identity in doing so. Ghostbusters still has potential, and Frozen Empire concludes in a promising direction, but it’s got to let go of the past before it can move forward.

Through some entertaining new characters, Kenan’s nailing of the tone, and the occasional satisfying scene between characters, Frozen Empire shows that there’s still some life in this world, but only when leaving the past in the past. Nostalgia has always been the curse of the Ghostbusters franchise, and that’s becoming even more apparent in this latest iteration. There’s a world full of possibilities in this franchise, but this series has some unfinished business that it can’t seem to shake in order to move on.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is now available to stream on VOD in the U.S.

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