Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Ghostbusters is an interesting franchise. The 1984 original is a classic and always fun to watch and the second one has some charm to it but didn’t quite hit the heights of the first. Then there is the 2016 version which isn’t as bad as most people make out although it suffers from just not being funny. Then we had the 2021 Afterlife film which was good as a soft reboot of the franchise and tried perhaps a little too hard to try and wipe the 2016 version from our memories.  I enjoyed the last one and because most people seemed to like it as well we get a sequel which is directed by the same guy who did the ‘Poltergeist’ remake in 2015. 

The action has moved to the firehouse and a large portion of the film takes place here which might seem like a good idea in theory but sadly in practise it make the film feel a bit cheap. I know the action does move out of the firehouse from time to time but the firehouse did feel like a bit of overused nostalgia.  The new characters introduced in ‘Afterlife’ were fleshed out a bit more and some worked better than others. I thought that Mckenna Grace wasn't as much fun to watch in this as she was in the first. She did seem somewhat more teenagery (if that’s a word) than she didn't in the last one. The subplot with Melody (played well by Emily Alyn Lind) didn’t really add anything to the overall story and could easily have been cut out. The negative thing it did was reduce Phoebe’s IQ by about half because she does stupid things that her character wouldn’t have done in the last film. Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon did seem to be enjoying the married couple quite well and Rudd is always dependable. Finn Wolfhard continues to struggle to break away from the Stranger Things image and like Afterlife doesn't really contribute anything. Celeste O’Connor does seem to have had a bit more added to her character so she does seem a bit more of an action type. Podcast did seem to have taken a bit out of his character but that helped because there was a bit more to him and I thought Logan Kim did a good job. 

There is one thing that i like about this film and it might feel like a back handed compliment and that is the special effects are really impressive. Normally it's quite hard to make a frozen world look effective but they managed to make it work in this film. 

There are two notable comedians in this film. James Acaster and Kumail Nanjiani. One is good and one isn’t. Sadly a Brit, James Acaster is the weaker one. It does feel like his casting is a bit of stunt casting because they think having a familiar British comedian/actor in a big Hollywood film would pull in the audience but I think that as funny as can be, he doesn't feel like a believable character in this. Patton Oswalt is in this film, give him the Lars Pinfield character and give Acaster the Wartzki role as that is only a few minutes of screen time. Kumail Nanjiani is someone that I usually don’t like. I don’t think he’s particularly funny and not very likeable. He wasn't the worst part of ‘The Eternals’ but he didn’t help the cause.  In this he was one of the best parts of the film. The almost deadpan tone that he adopts worked perfectly for his character and this film would really have suffered had he not been cast in the film.

The ultimate problem with Frozen Empire is that it got the nostalgia balance wrong. In Afterlife, it got it right by having new characters but supported by established characters that didn’t take the spotlight from the newbies. This time the newbies get swamped by the original ghostbusters. By the time the plot kicks in we are about two thirds into the movie by which point the whole thing feels a bit underwhelming because we are supposed to root for our heroes against a villain that hasn’t been properly established.  I don’t want to make it sound like Frozen Empire is a bad film because it isn’t and I would rank it above ‘Ghostbusters 2016’.