Things often get a bit too crowded in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, but the magic remains.
Though the movie fails to live up to the hype of “every ghost ever captured is released,” the film is family fun. Bottom line, if you liked the previous Ghostbusters saga, you will enjoy this one.
The star of the movie is not Bill Murray or Dan Ackroyd but young McKenna Grace as the 15-year-old Phoebe Spengler, granddaughter of original Ghostbuster, Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis). Grace plays an overachiever with alienation problems and frustrations, and stands out among a large cast.
Indeed, the ever-expanding Ghostbuster crew could use some layoffs. There seemed to be little reason for many of the new teenage members to exist except to add diversity, but adding new actors and then consigning them to bit parts defeats the purpose.
The premise of the movie is clever but bogged down with way too much detail. Simply stated, the Ghostbusters have to fight an old world god named Garraka, who is accidentally released from captivity and wants to destroy the world with ice.
To complicate things, the vault where the Ghostbusters have been storing their captured ghosts over the decades is now overflowing and bursts open. But fans expecting to see the ghosts of films past show up for a rematch will be disappointed as that fascinating concept is put on the back burner. We do get to see Slimer and the tiny marshmallow critters again, but the new and old Ghostbusters have their hands full battling the nasty old god.
It was good to see the return of veterans Ernie Hudson as Winston Zeddemore and Annie Potts as Janine Melnitz; both have aged remarkably well compared to Murray and Ackroyd. And man, that Ray Parker Jr. theme song never goes out of style.
As expected, there is a lot of humor in the film, most of it from Kumail Nanjiani as a ne’er-do-well who accidentally releases the old god in the first place, and Patton Oswalt as a magic researcher.
Director Gil Kenan did his best to juggle way too many balls and generally succeeded.
The film is a well-paced two hours long and yes, there is an after-credit scene.