My Review of "Ghostbuster: Frozen Empire"

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is one of my most anticipated movies for 2024. It just came out and I'm so disappointed. I couldn't be more let down at what I thought could have been such an amazing movie! I don't even ask for much but they just added so much to this sequel that it kind of became overloaded.

The movie starts off a few years after the events of the first movie. You kind of have to watch the first one to understand some of the in jokes around this movie. That first movie was so fun you should just stop there. If you've decided to continue the ride well it's a long one.

The Spengler family has now moved into the original Ghostbusters firehouse thanks to Winston. They're now fighting ghosts in New York and there seems to be a problem with the containment unit. Everything is starting to break down and that's when they realize that Winston has a team of engineers to fix things. Instead of fixing the original containment unit they have a new facility that they examine ghosts.

While that's in the background Phoebe is relegated to being a civilian again because she's only 15. One of the earlier ghostbusting escapades got the attention of the mayor. The mayor is willing to accept the destructive nature of their actions but cannot tolerate a 15 year old to tag along with their antics.

Then while all that's happening there's a guy that decides to sell his family heirloom to Ray for a few dollars. The thing looks like it should belong in a museum yet he's willing to part with it to a local mystic pawn shop for $50. I found this utterly ridiculous especially with inflation and the cost of living in New York city. That's the type of comedy you'll be getting in this movie.

This heirloom is the catalyst that starts up the huge big problem that the Ghostbusters have to resolve. It's the cause of the whole frozen New York thing. Oddly enough, they didn't give this too much attention in the story. You'd think they'd give it more backstory and gravitas to make us understand how big a deal it was just like the previous ghostbuster movies.

Not to be outdone there's another side story where there's a mysterious ghost that befriends Phoebe in a semi-romantic relationship that is quite awkward and so weird. I guess it shows how diverse these ghosts can be since not one of them is like the other. There's such a huge range for them.

As you can see they had to juggle so many small stories into one. Since there are so many stories in one movie they don't have a lot of time to play around with. Instead of using flashbacks and visual sequences to explain the story they use dialogue to explain what's happened. This comes with a whole hour filled with mystical jargon that they try to shovel us assuming that we totally understand.

There's tons of cameos from the older movies that don't really need to be there. A lot of this movie is to please audiences that they remember about things in the past. They tried to bring back as much as they could and it's really at the detriment of the storytelling of this movie. I wished that they could have focused more at the task at hand. This would have made it a lot more fun and enjoyable.

Overall, this movie is a huge dud. I was really disappointed and almost walked out of the movie theatres a couple times. They had so much potential and it was all laid out for them. Instead they decided to try to appease the masses and it didn't work. I have to give this movie a 3 out of 10. It was terrible and I don't recommend this to anyone.