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I found the Blu-Ray of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) at the public library yesterday and thought it would make for fun Saturday night viewing. I’ve seen all of the Ghostbusters films at least once, apart from the 2016 gender-flip which died in the reviews, so I figured I owed myself a look at the latest movie in the franchise.

It was a fun film along the lines of Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) which I previously reviewed.

It continues the adventures of the Spengler family including the Mom Callie (Carrie Coon), oldest son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), Mom’s boyfriend Gary (Paul Rudd) and of course the star of the show (even though she didn’t get top billing) fifteen-year-old Phoebe (eighteen-year-old Mckenna Grace).

Also returning from “Afterlife” are Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) and Podcast (Logan Kim). Add in the “originals” Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ray Stantz (Dan Ackroyd), Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), and Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) and you have quite a crew.

That’s actually my main complaint about the movie: too many principles, too many Ghostbusters. Although the action mainly focused on Phoebe, it was a mess trying to keep track of that many people wearing proton packs.

The story begins in 1904 where a fire brigade from a very familiar firehouse encounters a strange, frozen phenomenon in an “adventurers’ club” which had chosen to open an ancient sphere containing a god-like evil spirit. Fortunately (we don’t understand this until later) the keeper of said-sphere known as a “Firemaster” was present to contain it.

Jump to the present and we see the Ghostbusters hard at work chasing a flying “sewer dragon” through the streets of New York and generally causing havoc and mayhem.

Even with the ghost captured, the current Mayor Walter Peck (William Atherton) (yes, the “this man has no dick” Peck) threatens the team but only arrests Phoebe for mouthing off to him (which isn’t actually a crime but it’s not like New York City hasn’t had its fair share of corrupt Mayors and Cops).

Turns out the old firehouse’s containment is getting pretty full (I guess it was refilled after the big explosion in the 1984 film) and no one’s bothered to clean it out.

Throughout most of the film, there are ominous signs that a great evil is coming, but in the meantime, a now “benched” Phoebe (fifteen-year-olds shouldn’t be playing with unlicensed portable nuclear accelerators) inadvertently meets a “friendly ghost,” perpetually sixteen-year-old Melody (played by twenty-one-year-old Emily Alyn Lind).

Melody died in a fire that killed her whole family. She’s stuck here as a ghost because she started the fire and needs to find “closure” before she can move on to the other realm. She and Phoebe become fast friends, so much so, that when the owner of a diner calls the Ghostbusters to rid them of a ghost (all the adults are out battling other specters), Phoebe and Podcast respond and Phoebe deliberately misses Melody with her proton stream.

Enter Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani) who, with the passing of his grandmother, is the last of the line of Firemasters keeping the evil Garraka (god-spirit in the orb) in check. Not knowing or caring about all that, he sells a bunch of grandma’s old stuff to Ray at his shop, which begins the whole mess.

In the meantime, now wealthy businessman Winston has bankrolled a big ghost research project which includes a much bigger containment grid to which they can move the firehouse ghosts. We are introduced to a whole new bunch of bad spirits who are research subjects and get to be big trouble when (of course) they escape.

I should say that dear, beloved Slimer from the first film, has been asleep in the firehouse attic all this time and when Mommy Dearest refuses to listen to Trevor about his discovery, tries to tackle the beast himself with semi-humorous results.

There’s a lot of moving parts to the movie, so I won’t try to encapsulate the entire plot. However, we do see that Garraka, even “orbed” controls all other ghosts including Melody who, after Phoebe uses one of Winston’s machines to “extract” her own spirit for two minutes (so she can see what it’s like to be a ghost, or more exactly, to share a bit of Melody’s experience) is used to release the big baddie from confinement.

In other words, Phoebe effectively kills herself for two minutes so she can be a ghost. Yikes! What if she couldn’t get back in time? Of all the nonsense the film had to offer, this one made absolutely no sense.

The ending is a big redemption tale with the Ghostbusters (saving the city, of course) endearing themselves to Peck, Nadeem comically accepting and using his Firemaster role, Phoebe using her science knowledge to fight Garraka, and finally Melody’s obsession with fire being the key to stopping the bad guy and successfully making it to the other side.

Everyone including Janine gets into costume and we have Ghostbusters coming out our proverbial ears. Some fans complained that Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) and Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) weren’t in the film, but there really wasn’t room for them. Too much fan service going on as it was.

The movie made references not only to “Ghostbusters 2” but the 1986-1991 animated show The Real Ghostbusters which I faithfully watched with my kids when they were little. According to the IMDb trivia, none of the actors from that show were consulted or offered cameos, which was just a shame.

Absolutely nothing will top or even equal the 1984 classic, but Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours, in spite of its flaws.

Back it goes to the public library.