Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire-A Bloated and Bland Blockbuster That’s Not Without Some Fun Moments

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire has its moments. The return of Dan Aykroyd is a welcome one, with Aykroyd spouting mindless exposition and Paranormal techno-babble so confidently that it makes any scene with him quite fun. Patton Oswald gives a similar performance in a brief scene, spouting mindless exposition so confidently that he was a joy to watch in his short screentime. Some of the Ghostbusters action could also be admittedly quite fun, such as the opening chase through New York and a brief fight with a possessed lion statue.

But while not without its moments, I felt Frozen Empire to be just as bland as the previous film. I found the story pretty uninteresting, detailing a new franchise mythology involving an ancient God and a secret society of Ghostbusters that goes back to the beginning of recorded history, all of which feels like a far cry from the original, where the mythology was intentionally simple and took a back-seat to the comedy. Here, it feels like the opposite, where the entire narrative feels built on one scene of mindless exposition and generic world-building after another, with the jokes and quips taking the back seat. 

I'm also not the biggest fan of how the film turns the Ghostbusters into basically superheroes, with a scene early on of Winston showing off new Ghostbusters technology like he's Tony Stark when, for me, the fun of the original was that these were regular working-class guys. While they certainly were intelligent, the film's central joke was that these intelligent men treated their Ghostbusting jobs like a 9-to-5 pest control or firefighting job. Not only did this aspect of the characters give the original film a humorous central running gag, but it also made these characters feel grounded and relatable despite all the paranormal events surrounding them. I never got that sense of grounded relatability to any of the characters in this film, making most of them pretty uncompelling. 

The film has a pretty bad pacing problem. Much of the first and second acts felt like they went on forever, with the film overloading them with one side plot after another. Not many of these sub-plots were very interesting. The film attempts a central arc for McKenna Grace's Phoebe, with her learning to appreciate her family and being young, but it feels pretty cliche and predictable. It doesn't help that the film gives her a separate side plot involving a relationship she forms with Emly Alyn Lind as a ghost that's pretty boring, but with its hints of romance, I was admittedly on board with it, but by the end, it doesn't go beyond a few small glances that many could argue the filmmakers intended to be strictly platonic. The film contains many more side plots, from one involving the return of William Atherton's Walter Peck as he attempts to shut down the Ghostbusters to even one involving Kumail Nanjiani, who the film eventually reveals to have Paranormal fire powers. All of these side plots only serve to make the movie feel overly bloated and make it feel longer than it is. 

The film's script is also pretty inconsistent in the comedy department. There are a few jokes here or there that are fairly funny, with moments involving the previously mentioned Dan Aykroyd and Patton Oswald, but Paul Rudd as Gary surprisingly has his moments. However, most of the jokes come from MCU-styled quips and pop culture references that rarely land and frequently had me rolling my eyes. 

As someone who didn't care much for Afterlife, Frozen Empire feels more of the same. However, with a story built upon uninteresting mythology, bloated and rocky pacing, and an overload of uncompelling side plots that largely don't go anywhere, I feel Frozen Empire is a slightly worse film than Afterlife. I find that these new Ghostbusters movies are a shining example of my issues with the ongoing trend of nostalgia-bait blockbusters, as many seem to want to form their own mythologies and world-building and seem to take themselves way too seriously, with any comedy coming from forced quips and pop-culture references akin to the MCU. And in my opinion, this style of cheap nostalgia-bait blockbusters rarely works.

Now Playing in theaters in the U.S