Film Review: Ghostbuster - Frozen Empire

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Acceptable

Some people think that my standards for movies are too low.  If that's how you feel, that's fine with me.

But often, it is simply that I am easy to please when it comes to much of my entertainment.  As long as you don't bore me or insult me, I tend to be satisfied.

The critics have been mostly negative about Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, but I enjoyed this movie a great deal.  To borrow an insight about the previous film by a good friend of mine, this movie felt like a live-action version of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon show.

The movie takes place a few years after Ghostbusters: Afterlife.  The Spengler family of Callie (Carrie Coon), her genius daughter Phoebe (McKenna Grace), here non-genius son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), and Callie's boyfriend Gary (Paul Rudd) have moved to New York City and have re-opened the Ghostbusters business, bankrolled by the wealthy Winston Zedmore (Ernie Hudson).  Trouble occurs after the new Ghostbusters cause damage and mayor Walter Peck (William Atherton) tells them that since Phoebe is a minor, she cannot be a Ghostbuster.  Despondant, Phoebe wanders the city and befriends a chess-playing ghost named Melody (Emly Alyn Lind).  She also visits Ray Stanz (Dan Aykroyd) who is running a YouTube channel with Podcast (Logan Kim).  However, Nadeem Razmaadi (Kumail Nanjiani) comes to sell his late grandmother's mystical items, including a magical orb that holds a dark secret.  This leads to a chain of events that brings these different story threads on a collision course to the finale.

Director Gil Kenan does a competant job with making the movie go along at a fun and intersting pace.  He uses the visual effects well and gives the movie a creepy-fun vibe similar to the original films from the 1980's.  

For the most part the performances are good.  Rudd is fantastic in every scene he is in.  As with the first one, Grace is the main actress.  She is not very emotive, but that is part of her character.  This worked a lot better when she was younger and precocious, but as she gets older it has a diminshing return.

My favorite part was seeing Aykroyd.  Unlike the last film where he essentially had a glorified cameo, Aykroyd is in a significant part of the movie and is integral to the plot.  You can see him fall back into his old Ray Stanz character without missing a beat.  Hudson also has a larger role, but he plays Winston different than in the originals.  Before he was a working-class stand-in for the audience.  Here, he is the cool and collected business man.  It is a nice evolution of the character that Hudson does well.  His chemistry with Akyroyd and the rest of the cast is great.  Bill Murray and Annie Potts return, but they are essential cameos like in the previous film.  Coon and Wolfhard do a decent job, but they are not given much to do.

I would say that is my biggest criticism of the film.  This is particularly true of Trevor: he has almost nothing to do.  He has a b-story involving Slimer, but it doens't really figure in to the overall plot.  Callie has a sub-plot about being a mom and a Ghostbuster, but this is superceded by Gary's arc where he tries to figure out how to parent children that are not his.  Nadeem's story is fine, but it just feels like something that could have been incorporated better.  Even Lucky (Celeste O'Connor) from the last movie is here, but she doesn't have anything unique to do.

Another issue is that the main villain is generic and forgettable.  Gozer was built up by attribution throughout the original and even Viggo loomed large in Ghostbusters 2.  But this villain feels like Steppenwolf from the theatrical Justice League: artificial and forgettable.  Besides this, there are strong romatic overtones between Phoebe and Melody.  It is subtle and could simply be an expression of feminine friendship.  But the framing of some of their scenes seem clearly intimate.  Lucky also makes reference to a mystical room as a "sex dungeon," which was very uncomfortable to hear while in a theater that had many children.  The joke doesn't get too explicit, but it didn't need to be there.

Despite this, I found that I had a good time in the theater.  The humor was some nice, goofy fun.  Podcast has a joke with Patton Oswalt and a telephone that makes little sense but had me laughing longer than it should have.  The people involved don't seem interested in re-inventing the wheel.  The plot feels like something from the cartoon show, in a good way.  There are some new and creative technologies introduced, like a new type of ghost extractor.  There were even some creative ghost that possesses different objects.  Again, nothing here is earth-shattering, but it was enough for me to enjoy.

I like the world of Ghostbusters and this movie let me spend a few enjoyable hours there.  Not a bad deal.