REVIEW: ‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’ Is How You Continue A Franchise

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is great. It’s written and directed by Gil Kenan from Columbia Pictures/Sony. There are certain famous movies that spawned massive franchises that I adamantly believe are better ideas than they are actually good movies. The original Ghostbusters is high on that list for me. Bill Muray’s brand of smug, misogynistic humor has never appealed to me, for starters. And the movie is so wrapped up in technobabble. By the time Gozer reappeared in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, most of the audience had forgotten they were even the big bad of the original movie.

But whether Ghostbusters is good or bad hardly matters. Especially when the romantic ideal of Ghostbusters as a franchise is so powerful. That’s why Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is so successful. It’s not trying to recreate Ghostbusters itself. The movie builds on the idea of how Ghostbusters makes us feel. And it makes us feel good, obviously.

When I think about Ghostbusters, I think about proton packs, the Ecto 1, and ghosts. And I think about a ragtag group with a bit of a chip on their shoulder goofing it up in a firehouse. Ingeniously, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire jumps straight into New York City. The last movie took place in rural Oklahoma. The new movie jumps ahead a little bit in time and throws us right into a ghostbusting sequence. The full Spengler family is chasing a ghost through Manhattan in the Ecto 1.

This cold open lets us skip all the exposition it would otherwise take to get the crew from Oklahoma to Manhattan. It introduces all of the movie’s humor in one short car ride. It also establishes all of the individual areas for growth each of the four family members will work on throughout the film. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire establishes itself as quite funny quite quickly.

Gary (Paul Rudd) is a very Paul Rudd character. He hams it up for the camera but then turns around and gives you great one-liners. Callie Spangler (Carrie Coon) feels a little more like a real character this time and not just a plot device. She gets some solid zingers off of Rudd, especially. Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) plays dumb but affable well, never becoming annoying in his stupidity. And Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) nails being the star with a wicked dry humor.

The legacy cast is mostly there for show. I find Murray truly intolerable, but Annie Potts and Ernie Hudson are always welcome on screen. Dan Aykroyd has some solid chemistry with Podcast (Logan Kim), who make up a surprising amount of the screen time together. Aykroyd’s best scene is with Patton Oswalt. Oswalt makes one of the movie’s several egregiously long and detailed info dumps tolerable with some of Frozen Empire’s best comedy. Kumail Nanjiani fairs decently too, among this huge cast. His schtick gets a little old after a while, but he redeems himself by the end. The biggest miss in the gigantic cast is that Celeste O’Connor’s Lucky gets too little screen time. Her friendship with Trevor is fun to watch on the few occasions we get to.

It’s refreshing, at least, that in a movie with multiple teenage characters, they are just friends. Movies should allow teens to be friends without turning it into something more. And it’s great. Ghostbusters: Frozen Kingdom also offers some solid pining. Surely it was designed to be readable as a platonic relationship if you want to see it that way. But Phoebe is clearly crushing hard on a character played by Emily Alyn Lind. While this relationship is a tad curtailed by the need to put many characters on screen, it’s still the emotional crux of the whole movie. While it’s hard to follow up on the emotional sting of Afterlife, Frozen Empire still fairs pretty well.

For as many characters as there are vying for screen time and emotional development, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire does a pretty good job providing it to everyone. The theme of the movie is family. It’s about whether Phoebe is allowed to be part of the Ghostbusters. Or if Trevor can be respected enough as an adult. It’s about whether Gary is really a part of the family. Or if being a Spangler in name makes Callie a Spangler in spirit. And it’s about whether it’s a good enough excuse that busting makes you feel good to keep doing it as an old man. Callie’s arc is the most truncated, but on the whole, the movie has a great sense of family and finding one’s place in it.

Who wouldn’t want to be the platonic ideal of a Ghostbuster? Frozen Empire nails that sentiment. Regardless of what the original movie was actually about, the giant cast and how each of them comes together to form this Ghostbusters/Spangler family is spot on. Even the myriad references to the franchise’s past manage not to feel grating. There are a lot of them, but they always slip within the existing humor structure. This way you’re laughing at the references instead of just ogling them. Rudd and Wolfhard are especially good at delivering these.

It’s also very appreciated how much they curse in this movie. It stars teenagers. Of course they should say bad words. Sanitizing the movie to be “family-friendly” would have ruined the entire tone of the comedy. Thankfully, we get some perfectly placed potty language instead.

It’s too bad the movie’s pacing isn’t a little tighter. The giant exposition sequences overshadow the action moments, especially the finale. The action all feels a tad rushed. It also lacks some of the epic scale of the State Puft Marshmellow Man or Statue of Liberty. It’s all met with a strong score and camerawork, at least. There are some awesome shots of the Ecto 1 speeding by that feel like they’re out of a kind of movie that doesn’t exist anymore.

Despite some pacing troubles and a few characters deserving a little more screen time, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a great entry in a storied franchise. It leans on what we all think Ghostbusters should feel like with sharp comedy and satisfying character arcs. If somebody ever asks me when the two Ghostbusters movies came out, from now on, I’m telling them 2021 and 2024.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is playing in theaters March 22.