The reset is over. Jason Reitman took everyone back to the Midwest roots of the Afterlife with the last Ghostbusters. Now he’s back in New York City with his merging of generations of Ghostbusters, old and new. Frozen empire is way less condescendingly manipulative than Afterlife, but it’s still chasing the magic of the 1984 OG film that’s proving with age to be a one time deal. I ain’t afraid of no ghosts, I am afraid of stale IP though.
I guess the Ecto-1 made that long trip to the Big Apple. NYC is in the midst of a full blown ghost invasion, so business has never been better for the Spenglers: mom Callie (Carrie Coon), son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), and daughter Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and their new dad in law Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd). Backed by the rich ex Ghostbuster Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), the fam has moved back into the old firehouse like we’re back in 1984. A new threat arrives from Ray’s (Dan Aykroyd) Occult Shop, where the hapless broke Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani) brings in an old brass sphere, and well, I think you know where this is going with the title of the film.
Unlike Afterlife, which I hate more and more as I get distance from it, I think I’ll mostly have fonder memories of Frozen Empire. That’s because of a lot of the new blood here. Paul Rudd is fully embracing his role as more family friendly Bill Murray for the 2020’s, completely willing to go anywhere for a joke, including at his own expense. Kumail Nanjiani and Patton Oswalt, two of the funnier people around today, have key roles here, and give the movie a spark of life when Rudd, and the original cast including Annie Potts can’t do it all themselves. The movie mostly finds the right tone for a Ghostbusters movie too: breezy, stepping stone horror, for younger kids to laugh and get a little scared before they graduate to full blown horror movies.
Frozen Empire still has some problems though, unfortunately right at the center of the action. Poor Mckenna Grace was given the Anakin Skywalker direction of “be a petulant teenager.” While some of the ghost stuff she goes through is interesting from the ghost perspective, Phoebe shares none of Grace’s bubbly enthusiasm, and sucks all the fun out of the movie whenever she’s onscreen, unfair to the young actress. Finn Wolfhard is sidelined here too, getting Slimed instead of getting, you know, a real story. And Carrie Coon is a great actress…which no one would know watching this film, where she angrily stares at Paul Rudd for 2 hours. And the OG cast…other than Murray, they’re plot drivers, trapped between exiting the franchise in a dignified way and holding down the fort.
But all in all, you could do worse than spending some time with Paul Rudd, Kumail Nanjiani, and Bill Murray right? You laugh a little, get scared a little. Hell, you’re right Ray Parker! In the end, bustin makes me feel good!