Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Review - Nostalgia, Ice and Fire, Still Not Enough

Ghostbusters Frozen Empire Review: The team of Ghostbusters: Afterlife reunites for the sequel, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, adding ice and fire to it but lacking soul. Even though it is the story of soul-stealing, it still doesn't find its own soul. God knows from where the idea of recreating some of the locational scenes came, but it worked on the positive side. This sequel has a few surprises that are pleasant, but it's hurt by its overanalysing gesture. As expected, the finale comes to the rescue, which was anyway supposed to provide a visual treat. It does that part very well, though. Well, there is less freezing and less use of fire, which is an underwhelming thing to experience. On the soft side, it did manage to leave us with a slight touch of nostalgia.Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is set three years after the events of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, as the old gang is joined by a couple of new members. Sadly, Callie (Carrie Coon) benches underage but her best Spangler, Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), to appease the opponent, and the rest of the gang continues to bust ghosts. During her boredom, Phoebe befriends a girl ghost, Melody (Emily Alyn Lind), who beats her at chess. However, Phoebe isn't aware of Melody's actual plan, which is to help Garraka in exchange for her free pass to the afterlife. Phoebe is fooled, and Garraka overpowers them all and arrives in style to take over the entire world. Therefore, the veteran ghostbusters must join forces with their new recruits to save the world.The idea is generally predictable, as we have the same old methods of catching ghosts, and then someone's coming to destroy the world. Not just that, but even a practical presentation is dated too. The same car, the same Spangler, the same weapons, and the same locations too. We do have brass coming in as a new thing, but you'll see in the climax that it did not really help. "What's the worst part about being a ghost?" asks Phoebe, to which Melody replies, "I'll forever be 16." Well, that's typically girlish. But wait, the next moment is all that ghostly stuff when Phoebe asks, "And what's the best part?" and Melody just says, "Doing this." And disappears. Bang on humour, I must say. I wish they had added some more funny lines like this and intrigued us. Frozen Empire's villain is one such improvement that beats many previous films, but sadly, it appears in the last quarter of the narrative, giving us very little chance of becoming acquainted with it. The Firemaster comes with the same old theories you have seen in MCU and DCU movies for more than a decade.Frozen Empire has a big cast, but teenager Mckenna Grace walks away with the maximum screen space and best screen presence. Emily Alyn Lind, aka Melody, wasn't there for a long time but has left a solid impact—i.e., more than many leading cast members. Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon could hardly find any scenes to stand out. Finn Wolfhard attempts to catch eyeballs, but it is Kumail Nanjiani who gets the eyeballs. No director wastes Bill Murray like this. That's a terrible injustice to his persona and the character we know from the beginning of the Ghostbusters franchise. Dan Aykroyd still had that one shot left, while Ernie Hudson suited up in old jam alright.Eric Steelberg's cinematography takes you back to those frames of Ivan Reitman's 1984 blockbuster. The ending sequence is pretty similar to Reitman's evergreen flick. However, the unenthusiastic screenplay and dull dialogue fail to match the "Who you gonna call?" magic here. The visual effects are good in the finale episode and pretty decent otherwise. Nathan Orloff and Shane Reid cut a close to 2-hour film that lags in the middle and doesn't move forward. They could have trimmed 15 minutes here and there to make it gripping. The sound design, production value, and sets seemed okay for the time, in case you were expecting something mind-blowing. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is pretty much in the same zone as Gil Kenan's last Christmas comedy as far as entertainment for different age groups is concerned. Here he had to do a little fan service, and he did that fine. It's modern storytelling and new ideas that seemed missing. Nevertheless, Kenan doesn't bore you to death like others do. Frozen Empire is fairly entertaining in that sense, but a little lower considering the burden of reviving the franchise.