Movie Review: ‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’, starring; Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon

I’ll start by saying, I absolutely loved the very first two Ghostbuster films. They still hold up pretty well, nearly 40 years later. It’s a shame I can’t say the same for the newest Ghostbusters film, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.

That seems to be the trend for the franchise lately. The gender-flipping redo was cute, but not great. With the release of 2021’s Afterlife, it was as if the reboot never happened. Now, comes Frozen Empire, a mishmash of nearly everything we loved about the franchise, all tossed into one film. It’s just kind of a mess.

It’s not all bad, as we get some entertaining ghosts, such as the OG Slimer and cute little Marshmallow men. But, we also get some pretty crappy looking CGI ghosts as well. It’s just kind of a mixed bag.

Returing from Afterlife is Carrie Coon, who plays the late Egon Spengler’s daughter named Callie. Along with Coon is Mckenna Grace as Phoebe, Egon’s granddaughter. Finn Wolfhard shows up again at Trevor, the brother, along with Paul Rudd as Gary, the goofy teacher who is trying to be a step-dad.

The film opens with a eerie prologue, set in 1904 New York, and that’s where we meet the deadly “Death Chill.” Fast forward to the present, where the Spengler’s are causing a ruckus in the city, saving it from ghastly ghouls. The film is going fine at this point, but it kind of breaks down just like the Ecto-1. The old car is running on fumes, just like the movie begins to do the same.

The problem is the film turns into a mess. In Afterlife, we are introduced to a whole new world and generation of Ghostbusters, and the OG’s are dropped in a the end of the film to wrap up Egon’s death. It was cute and it worked, but not here. Instead of getting more time with the younger and at this point, far more entertaining ghost fighters, we get to see the cast of OG’s.

While Ernie Hudson and Dan Aykroyd were just fine in their roles, Bill Murray seems like he could care less. He should have really been cut out of the film. He sleep walks through his entire role, really hurting the film. It’s a shame that Venkman couldn’t even make me smile in the film. Throw in some wasted cameos that are really pointless and you have a jumbled mess of a film.

To make matters worse, the ghost villain looks so ridiculous and not scary, I cringed watching it. Give me back the days of Zuul!

While there are some enjoyable parts of the film, Paul Rudd does his best to save it, in the end, there’s just too much mess. It’s really a shame because Rudd’s performance, Slimer’s appearance, as well as the Mini-Puff’s are for not, as the film can’t seem to get out of it’s own way. For devout fans of the franchise, I’m sure they will look past the faults of the film. I wouldn’t tell anyone to not see the film, but go in knowing that you will get a bit of the good with a bit of the bad. And, a really lame-ass Bill Murray in one of his most uninspired roles of his career.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire gets a C+.