Review: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.

As far as nostalgia-heavy sequels that bank upon the fond memories of their audiences to rake in more money go, you could do far worse than "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire," yet another attempt to cash in on the 1984 comedy classic. The film is, of course, nowhere near as good as Ivan Reitman's original picture, but as far as these things go, there's some moderate fun to be had here.

The Spengler family - who are thankfully no longer being visited by a digitally-recreated Harold Ramis - has moved from Oklahoma to New York City, where they've taken over the firehouse that serves as Ghostbusters headquarters. They continue to catch unruly spirits, but have found themselves on the wrong side of the mayor (William Atherton, whose character has gone from the condescending EPA agent to the cranky top official of New York City).

Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) finds herself booted off the team after the mayor points out that she's underage, so she's left to her own devices, which leads to her befriending a ghost (Emily Alyn Lind) who is stuck in purgatory. Without giving too much away, their friendship leads to a dangerous artifact handed to Dan Aykroyd's Ray Stantz by a character portrayed by Kumail Nanjiani - whose family was tasked with being "fire masters" to prevent an ancient demon from rising and turning everything in its path into ice - releasing the demon on the city.

It is up to the Spengler family and the older Ghostbusters (Ernie Hudson returns as Zeddemore, Annie Potts is back as sarcastic Janine, and Bill Murray has a few walk-on scenes as Venkman) to prevent the demon from releasing the thousands of ghosts that the Ghostbusters have stored in the firehouse's wall over the years and creating an undead army.

One of the problems with "Frozen Empire" is that there are too many subplots - Phoebe's friendship with the ghost could have used more screen time, while the thread involving Nanjiani's relatives could have used less, despite the actor providing many of the film's funnier quips - and entirely too many secondary characters.

On the other hand, there are a number of MVPs in this film - Rudd provides some laughs and pathos as Gary, Phoebe's science teacher who is now involved with Carrie Coons' Callie Spengler; Grace shines as Phoebe; Nanjiani is pretty funny; Patton Oswalt has a solid cameo, and Aykroyd gets the most to do of the legacy cast.

Trotting out new "Ghostbusters" sequels every so often isn't really necessary, although it's more watchable than many of the other franchises that return to the well again and again. The original 1984 film is by far the best of the bunch, the 2016 reboot was better than most people gave it credit for at the time, and all of the other sequels have been varying shades of not bad. 

This fifth entry doesn't lay into the nostalgia factor nearly as hard as the one before it, but there are still a number of call-backs - Slimer makes an appearance and there's a mini army of marshmallow men. The film doesn't really do anything new and its plot involving the demon being unleashed on the world is fairly substandard. But the film also asks us to spend time with a group of talented and likable people, and that's what makes this expensive-looking blockbuster occasionally work. As I said, you could do far worse.