Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
The new Ghostbusters film is pretty jam packed. There are a few things that make it a little bit over bloated and some things to pick at, but for fans of the franchise and specifically the hit cartoon “The Real Ghostbusters”, there's a lot to enjoy.
The new villain is pretty cool (no pun intended, despite the fact that this new ghosts main power is overwhelming ice attacks, hence the “Frozen Empire”). They give it a little tiny backstory, which is fine, and reminds me a lot of Egon reading passages from Tobin's Spirit Guide in TRG. That's about the extent you get for the villain's hows and whys. But that's ok, because the movie is mostly about the Ghostbusters themselves.
One of the problems is that they have a hard time giving each character meaningful screen time because the cast is becoming so big. Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon who are essentially husband and wife in this film have little more to do than show up and be parents for a few scenes. Finn Wolfhard whose character just turned 18 has gripes about not being treated like an adult has a side story about Slimer that has no conclusion and goes nowhere. And there are more examples like this that I won't mention for spoilers sake, but the only characters with meaningful story arcs are McKenna Grace's Pheobe Spengler and Dan Aykroyd's Ray Stantz (which is cool they give Ray such a big part in my opinion). Ernie Hudson's Winston also gets a few key moments too, which I enjoyed. But in future films (which I assume will be coming) they need to just fully commit to the new cast and save the classics for just a few cameos if anything at all. Or vice versa, but they need to trim the fat somewhere.
The ghost moments are all pretty sweet, but I would have liked a lot more of them. They put some good care into crafting interesting ghosts and they all look cool. Slimer in particular was done in the same way as the original, as in an actual puppet that was then superimposed with CGI, which looks great. I really enjoyed that dedication to the classic look.
The pacing is good, it moves along at an entertaining speed, and I didn't feel like there were any drag moments. But when it gets to the end, I legitimately thought it was going to finish with a bridge directly into another movie. Instead they just wrap it up. This was an odd choice I wish I could go into more deeply, but I don't want to spoil anything for you. I don't know if there were budgetary constraints or something like that, but the climax seems like the least fleshed out part of the whole film. That doesn't mean it's bad, it just felt like there was something missing.
I enjoyed the ride for what it was, and I'm willing to overlook some of the weaker moments because the cast is all in and the story is serviceable, but this probably ranks the lowest of all the Ghostbuster films (aside from that absolutely demonic remake from 2016 that we don't talk about). That being said, I hope they make more because the franchise still has a lot of legs, and even with a slightly lukewarm “Frozen Empire”, there's still a lot of fun to be had here.
7.5/10
