Movie Review: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Synopsis: Three years after saving the world in Summerville, Oklahoma, Callie Spengler, her two children, Trevor and Phoebe, and her boyfriend, Gary, have relocated to New York City resurrected the Ghostbusting business her father helped found in the 1980s, much to the chagrin of NYC mayor and long-time Ghostbuster antagonist Walter Peck. They soon find themselves once again needing to save the world when an ancient artifact containing an ancient god looking to wipe out the human race by freezing them to death is accidentally opened.

Who's in it? The movie stars Paul Rudd, McKenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Dan Aykroyd, Annie Potts, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson.

Review: I had some serious doubts when Hollywood decided to reboot the Ghostbuster franchise in 2021 but I enjoyed Ghostbusters: Afterlife more than expected and was excited to see Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire as a result. I didn't get an opportunity to see it at the theater as I had hoped but did watch it last night after it came on Netflix. As it turns out, while I didn't hate the film, I was also glad I didn't spend money on a movie ticket.

This movie was basically what I was expecting Ghostbusters: Afterlife to be, a film that spends a lot of time on nostalgia without putting a lot of effort into the overall plot. You have some great cameo appearances by characters and actors from the original two movies, such as William Atherton and the surviving OG Ghostbusters. However, that came at the expense of what could have been a solid bad guy.

Actually, to be fair, the nostalgia was only part of the problem. The movie spends way too much time on Pheobe's (Grace) teenage angst, and even more wasted time on that whole Ghostbuster research lab thing, which while admittedly instrumental to the plot seemed to be primarily geared toward re-introducing characters from the previous movie and adding even more characters to a franchise that already has too many (the more characters you have, the less time you have to build up the main characters).

As a result of those things, the god, Garraka, that should have been central to this movie doesn't even do anything of any great importance until the very end. And even then, I honestly wasn't all that impressed. For an entity that supposedly has the ability to freeze things to absolute zero, his cold spell seemed to not bother people all that much. Peter Venkman (Murray) didn't even bother to zip his coat. I don't think even any of the unnamed extras died.

Oh, and let's not forget the movie ultimately proves Walter Peck (Atherton) correct. The Ghostbusters might have been the only ones who could save the day, but they also happened to be the ones who caused the problem to begin with. Can you really consider them the heroes when that's the case?

Final Opinion: It's not a terrible movie and there are some entertaining and funny scenes throughout. I just feel like this movie spent a little too much time trying to pay homage to the original films while expanding the Ghostbusting universe and not enough time being its own movie.

My Grade: C+