Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire builds on the quality and fun of Afterlife

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a very good movie. It’s a film that’s better than its predecessor, Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Frozen Empire starts with action and very rarely lets its foot off of the entertainment gas. These are important things to state from the get-go because the high hopes for Afterlife were, for the most part, met by audiences and critics. Thus, it’s surprising that Frozen Empire doesn’t fumble the franchise and manages to be a very entertaining film that will exceed the expectations of fans of the first and fourth entries. Moreover, even if you’ve never seen a Ghostbusters film, Frozen Empire is a solid film that delivers popcorn, and escapist fun that people go to the cinema for.

For fans of the franchise, Frozen Empire does a remarkably solid job at integrating the classic cast with the new members. As they should, the new cast handles most of the film’s screen time and provides the lion’s share of the reason why it’s enjoyable. The two exceptions to that is Dan Aykroyd who has a main role as the owner of a curiosity shop in New York City. His character is well-written and serves a genuine purpose and Aykroyd portrays him with a genuine sense of exuberance that’s infectious and spreads to the younger cast members when they share screen time. Ernie Hudson’s Winston also has a character that adds to the story as the generous donor who is bankrolling the ghost-trapping organization.

The initial ghost chase in New York City introduces the relevant new ghost-trapping technology, as well as, the personal dynamics between the Spangler family. This leads to Aykroyd’s curiosity shop where he’s in the process of buying some antiquities from a nervous and very funny Kumail Nanjiani. One of the objects in question is a round orb that contains the spirit of the big bad that’s responsible for the ice that you’ve seen in the trailer and the “frozen” in the movie’s title.   

That’s an oversimplified synopsis of the story for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. There are several nice plot twists and a couple of fake outs where you think it’s going to go in a very cheesy, predictable direction, but manage to avoid those traps. This is a very good film, fans of the series will even say it’s great. It offers several throwback nods to the last time that the Ghostbusters were in NYC, like the walking statue of Liberty, and even some of the real-life, although treated as part of the story, merchandising that happened around the first film.

I’m a fan of the movie series and I like to be entertained, so Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire worked for me on two levels. At some points during the film it had mocking overtones that put it in league with some moments from Jurassic Park. There are several classic casting callbacks that fans of the original film will enjoy also. 

However, in hindsight, the big bad was too easily defeated. The villain is fabulous, looks scary and the trailer implies more of a horror element to this film than others in the series. It is not a mass casualty situation by any stretch of the imagination. With all of those thousands of ice daggers coming through the beach, roads and buildings, nobody was harmed. It’s not that I need characters to be harmed in stories that I like, it’s just that it implies big damage and panic, and it doesn’t happen on that scale. Nobody is expecting The Conjuring in a Ghostbusters movie, but it might throw the audience for a good loop if something that shook the characters or the area happened.

If Ghostbusters: Afterlife was a film that honored Harold Ramis and got the band back together, then Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire takes the crew back to where it all started for a new adventure and a little nostalgia. Some people won’t see it as a problem, but it’s when the classic Ghostbusters enters the film that the movie drags down ever so slightly, specifically when it forces itself to pivot to Bill Murray.

Murray had a majority of the laughs in the first movie in 1984. In Afterlife he had some very poignant moments and in Frozen Empire the film tries too hard to shoehorn him into key scenes. The scene when he’s interviewing Nanjiani is funny, but it’s funny because of him and not Bill Murray. The colander with the wires is on Nanjiani’s head and Murray is jokingly interrogating him. It’s a thing that we’ve seen in three out of five Ghostbusters movies and the simple, low-brow shtick of that is gone, it’s Nanjiani and how he handles Murray’s barbs that made that scene work. The lines the Murray has in the film stick out like a sore thumb and the only true Murrayism that hit home for us was his pounding a box inside the firehouse to reveal a hidden bottle of liquor. Otherwise his “tall dark and horny” or “we’re gonna need a bigger trap” lines just seem tired and uninspired.

If there’s another Ghostbusters movie that would be fine, but just because it’s a Ghost Corps production doesn’t mean that all of them have to return. It would be OK if some of the classic crew retired and let the new blood run the show. This is the problem that Star Wars had in that it tried to hold onto the legacy characters too long when they potentially had great stories that would’ve sustained new characters. Take a page from the recent wasteland of Star Wars Ghostbusters and have the courage to leave the legacy characters behind in the next film.

The other thing that sticks out about Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is that there doesn’t seem to be any demand for this movie. Is this a movie that anybody was asking for? I asked 120 high school students if they wanted to see the film and three of them said that they wanted to. There were about 20 who said that they saw Dune 2 or wanted to see that film and a couple that wanted to see One Love. But again, Frozen Empire is a very good film, it’s just possible that this is a very good film that very few people will see unless it has very good word of mouth and legs for weeks before it gives up the ghost.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is rated PG-13 for two mild sexual references, ghost action and sustained action.