I've seldom seen a film so horrified of angering the fans as Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a film that was so focused on making up for the perceived transgressions of the previous film in the franchise it could have come with a complementary fellatio from a Sony intern. It's a cynical, manipulative, hollow mess that has nothing but cheap nostalgia and reverence on offer - not just for the first Ghostbusters movie, as it also transparently channels Stranger Things to evoke inchoate warm feelings for '80s comfort movies. It's so reverent it barely has any jokes (its one humorous scene a jarring Gremlins rip-off) and basically chooses to re-enact the original movie instead of having its own third act. To quote an infinitely better movie: a memory, trapped in amber. The sub-title really fits the film; It's a lifeless thing, an echo eternally bouncing around in old, dusty halls it didn't build.
To say Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is better, then, is not really a compliment - it just means that at least there are glimmers of... something... there.
After the events of Afterlife, the Spengler Clan (Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard and Mckenna Grace) have been funded by original Ghostbuster Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) and relocated to the old firehouse headquarters in New York, because this movie is nothing if not willing to try and milk all the fucking nostalgia it can out of its props and sets. Know your perceived audience, I guess.
And because the Ghostbusters are supposed to be scrappy underdogs (and because the Sony mandate is to reuse all the old stuff), their vehicles and equipment keep falling apart even though they're bankrolled by a millionaire. Nostalgia also dictates that the original crew be in the story, too, with a bigger role this time around, of course.
Also making a reappearance: William Atherton as Peck, who's been promoted to Mayor after wrecking the city back in the '80s. He's, well, very understandably miffed at the new Ghostbusters recklessly endangering lives in a high-speed pursuit across the New York Streets. As opposed to his first appearance, he's the sympathetic figure here, not the protagonists, because the script hasn't done any groundwork and just assumes you're going to root for the team. Nope! These nitwits are clearly a threat to themselves and others, much more so than the original crew.
Also making a reappearance: William Atherton as Peck, who's been promoted to Mayor after wrecking the city back in the '80s. He's, well, very understandably miffed at the new Ghostbusters recklessly endangering lives in a high-speed pursuit across the New York Streets. As opposed to his first appearance, he's the sympathetic figure here, not the protagonists, because the script hasn't done any groundwork and just assumes you're going to root for the team. Nope! These nitwits are clearly a threat to themselves and others, much more so than the original crew.
There's a lot of waffling around, a lot of pointless side-stories, but when the plot finally kicks in it has to do with an imprisoned old god trying to break loose, and with a couple familial mini-dramas (stepdad needs to be more assertive, the daughter needs to... I dunno, grow up or something? It's not worth wasting digital ink on). Everything feels like filler, a platform for cameos from series actors and props (Hey, it's Bill Murray! and Dan Aykroyd! And Slimer! And Annie Potts, who gets to wear a proton pack this time! Who the fuck was asking for that?) Pandering shit.
Oh, and they also bring back a couple of the kids from the prior movie, because of course they'd follow these people they barely know halfway across the continent. And that includes that insufferable little shit with the stupid name, too; Oh joy.
The script (by Jason Reitman and director Gil Kenan) is, like most Sony scripts, half-baked. Seriously, how can a distributor be behind so many movies with such shitty writing? Is it a quality control thing, production practices, do they have a running bet in how much of a crappy product people are willing to take?
In this case it's full of continuity errors, overstuffed with characters and exposition, and riddled with plain old continuity errors and bad plotting. It's more of a comedy than Afterlife, at least, but when the film's humor is indistinguishable from the purposefully bad dad jokes Paul Rudd keeps spouting, you're in trouble. It also sets up stuff that has no payoff or is flat-out contradicted: yet again, it repeats the same mistake Afterlife did of rehashing the final act of Ghostbusters and letting all the ghosts get loose... and then barely dwells on the aftermath to focus on a very underwhelming team-against-subpar villain thing.
It's as if they didn't watch their own shit. It tries to replicate the triumphant ending of the original, too, but this time no-one's there to see it, which was the whole point of having the Stay Puft confrontation out in the open- The whole city was watching! For all its supposed reverence for its source material, this is a movie that doesn't have the first clue how or why it worked in the first place.
Another thing that annoyed me: They make a big deal out of them tearing down the sliding pole at the fireman station (yes, this is a movie that fetishizes a brass cylinder)... and then it's mysteriously back in position again in time for a dumb joke. A small thing, but emblematic.
In this case it's full of continuity errors, overstuffed with characters and exposition, and riddled with plain old continuity errors and bad plotting. It's more of a comedy than Afterlife, at least, but when the film's humor is indistinguishable from the purposefully bad dad jokes Paul Rudd keeps spouting, you're in trouble. It also sets up stuff that has no payoff or is flat-out contradicted: yet again, it repeats the same mistake Afterlife did of rehashing the final act of Ghostbusters and letting all the ghosts get loose... and then barely dwells on the aftermath to focus on a very underwhelming team-against-subpar villain thing.
It's as if they didn't watch their own shit. It tries to replicate the triumphant ending of the original, too, but this time no-one's there to see it, which was the whole point of having the Stay Puft confrontation out in the open- The whole city was watching! For all its supposed reverence for its source material, this is a movie that doesn't have the first clue how or why it worked in the first place.
Another thing that annoyed me: They make a big deal out of them tearing down the sliding pole at the fireman station (yes, this is a movie that fetishizes a brass cylinder)... and then it's mysteriously back in position again in time for a dumb joke. A small thing, but emblematic.
On the positive side, director Gil Kenan has a much better grasp on spectacle than his predecessor. Most of it is your standard mediocre, expensive but fake-looking CGI stuff, but the crew manage to capture some cool scenes and at times lovely imagery. At the top of that list is Emily Alyn Lind as Melody, the ghost of an achingly cool teen with ethereal flames enveloping her, just walking in the nighttime New York streets; She's by far the best thing in the movie, though even she must bend to dumb, dumb, dumb plot necessities. Of the other new characters, most are just exposition faucets (poor Patton Oswalt... and the less said of James Acaster, the better). The only one who registers is Kumail Nanjiani, doing his usual schtick - but I like his usual schtick, so it's a positive.
I mentioned earlier that saying Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is better than Afterlife isn't really a compliment- as it should be clear by now, it's more of an insult towards Afterlife. These are movies that exist only because these properties need to be impaled on a sharp stick and paraded around, shaken in the hopes some money will fall out, in hopes of appeasing a toxic fandom that will brook no deviation from the original formula.
I'm beginning to think franchises are a lost cause.
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