Previously on http://www.TooManyServingsOfJohn.Com… A movie was bad!
Specifically the movie was called Ghostbusters: Afterlife. And it wasn’t necessarily bad, but I didn’t like it. It was one of the first Paul Rudd movies I reviewed for this column, and I thought it was a weird disjointed mash of different tones that didn’t work. It was one of those sequels that felt very made by committee in that it tried to be a reverent sequel (To a big studio comedy that was made on the fly and mostly improv) that treated this universe of spectral exterminators as if it deserved all this respect and sincerity. This sequel to the original two films (Where they just fight the same ghost and do the same things and make the same jokes.) was shoehorned into a basic small-town Stranger Things style plot that was just really boring. And for some who really loved those original films, this really worked, and bringing back Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, and CGI ghost Harold Ramis (Aykroyd and Murray look like crap, especially when standing next to Ernie Hudson and the weird rendering of what they think Harold Ramis would have looked like if he didn’t gain weight before he died.) was cool and made them happy. I found the whole thing weird and depressing and off. Paul Rudd was fun, but he wasn’t in it much. And it ended with the promise of more firehouse adventures in New York. Now we’ve arrived at the Frozen Empire…

Spoilers for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. There’s not much to spoil. This is the latest movie in a franchise that just keeps remaking the first movie, and unlike the better Marvel movies or Bond movies or long-running franchise sequels (Scream, Mission: Impossible), this one really doesn’t try to hide when they’re reusing the same general plot over and over again. Oddly enough, it worked better for me than the last one or when Jurassic World: Dominion did the same thing, but we’ll get into it.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire stars Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Celeste O’Connor, Logan Kim, Emily Alyn Lind, James Acaster, Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, William Atherton, Annie Potts, Ernie Hudson, Dan Aykroyd, and Bill Murray. It was directed by Gil Kenan and written by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman.

Alright. So this is an interesting one. I think due to the very nature of this movie and what it is, I have to approach this review from a few different perspectives at once and break it down from there, much like when I reviewed Quantumania. I liked this more than I expected. Many reviewers I trust and respect trashed this movie for its blatant nostalgia-baiting and emptiness, which I can’t disagree with, so I went in expecting a terrible movie and didn’t find one. It’s not a great movie either though, and I’ll get into why right now.

Reviewing this as a Sequel to the other Ghostbusters movies: Is it good?
I say no. Fans will disagree. It’s not even a good sequel to Afterlife, because there are so many characters in this that the cast of that movie gets sidelined for most of it. What I dislike about these movies, the latest two in particular, is they just continue to use the same plot beats and structure for all of these movies and if you have the opportunity to make a new different movie, STOP MAKING THE SAME ONE OVER AND OVER AGAIN. I know it can be argued that Marvel is the same way, but there’s a difference between having decades of stories to pull on that follow the same tropes and general mechanics and just making the same movie four times in a row. The Ghostbusters have to assemble or reassemble. There’s a slow burn build up where not much happens and there’s some spookiness and maybe jokes and then in the last fifteen minutes all the ghosts they’ve caught escape for some reason and they fight a big villain, only to defeat it by crossing the streams of the proton pack or just really protoning that thing good and everybody cheers and the theme starts playing and Bill Murray starts chanting “BILL MURRAY! BILL MURRAY! I LOVE MONEY! BILL MURRAY!”
Of course sequels require you to do some of the same things, but this is an insane universe where ghosts exist and each one has different rules and powers and limits, and you could do anything as long as you’re having famous comedians quip about it. So at least go bigger and better and do new stuff instead of just rehashing old stuff. To be fair, I thought there were less nostalgia callbacks in this one, though the list of things that return for no real discernible reason is long.
– Walter Peck is the mayor so he can shut down the Ghostbusters again. He did nothing and wasn’t as funny or mean. And when he shows up he’s in a chair that turns to face the camera so you can have the schticky reveal.
– Slimer is there again.
– They go back to the library with the spooky ghost woman who does the same thing she did years ago. Don’t want to have her make a joke or impact the plot? Okay.
– Annie Potts returns as Janine and gets a uniform but her character serves no purpose.
– Her, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson all suit up at the end only to fall down. They didn’t need to be there.
– A lion moves in front of the library again.
– They play a clip of that stupid music video they made.
So what I’m saying is, the fact that half of this movie is dedicated to reminding you of things you like instead of letting you see adventures with the new team and allowing them to tell a new story hinders this movie quite a bit. You can say this is because they need to pass the baton to the new guys in this one, but they did that last time. The original team are good in this as the new roles they’ve inhabited, and them suiting up added nothing to the proceedings. Dan Aykroyd is really fun in this as a guy who just wants to be involved in a more supernatural world despite his age. It’s not built upon past that. And Ernie Hudson still looks fantastic. I like that he’s got his life the most together. Bill Murray plays Bill Murray. I’ll get into it, but this movie feels weirdly edited and I wonder even if all the extra nostalgia-bait stuff was reshoots or studio mandated. There’s about three movies in this movie, and we’ve just reviewed the worst one of them. And by we I mean me. You could be doing a lot more to help here.

Reviewing this as a Movie on its Own: Is This Bit Good?
I’d say yes, I don’t mind what they’re doing here. The plot essentially is a big frozen monster has been imprisoned for a while and he wants to get out and freeze New York in the summer, but so far he can only make some parts really frosty throughout the film. He commands this dead ghost girl who accidentally set her tenement building on fire and killed her family (Dark) to flirt with Phoebe Spengler (McKenna Grace) so she’ll try to become a ghost and make out with this dead girl (Her family won’t let her bust ghosts, so this smart independent girl feels lost and lonely I guess?) which is a stretch really to assume that she’d have that idea on her own. Because frozen man can only control human ghosts and he specifically needs her to chant him out of the orb he’s been trapped in. None of it makes sense. And he wants to escape and let all the ghosts out of the containment chamber (It doesn’t happen really) and open a rift with a big sky beam to this other dimension where all ghosts come from. Got it?
Ray (Dan Aykroyd) does a YouTube show that’s basically a cross between Antiques Road Show and the Long Island Medium and has people bring in heirlooms of their loved ones to see if they’re haunted and he can provide them with closure. That’s how he gets frozen man’s orb, deadbeat grandson Nadeem Razmaadi (Kumail Nanjiani) brings in his grandma’s junk from the giant copper ghost containment room in her apartment with giant chains and warning symbols (A fixture in the modern New York real estate market) in a way that implies he just wants to get rid of a responsibility he knows is his, but the movie spends too much time away from him for him to have that arc. Eventually it’s revealed his grandma was the Fire Master, and he is now one as well, part of an ancient sect dedicated to fighting and containing frozen man. Still with me?
While all this is going on, Winston is running a Ghostbusters research group with precocious British scientist Lars Pinfield (The wonderful James Acaster and his neurotic energy fitting right in) to determine how to better trap and contain ghosts. Even though Winston has money (Clearly not much) he’s running this out of an abandoned aquarium, so we get scenes with vaguely interesting new ghosts being treated like museum exhibits. Also Podcast and Lucky, the two ancillary characters from the last movie, have left that small town to intern or work with Ray and Winstone respectively. They don’t need to be here, they add nothing to the movie, and Podcast’s jokes aren’t funny. We haven’t yet gotten to the main characters.
They weave in and out of the film in between scenes of exposition and scattered moments with random groups of the characters (There are too many people in this movie) but Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) and Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon) are now essentially the leaders of the Ghostbusters. We only get one scene with them, Phoebe and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) busting ghosts together before they spend the rest of the movie wandering around the firehouse trying to figure out how to be better co-parents. Or at least Paul Rudd tries to, Carrie Coon has little to no dialogue and not much to do in this and it’s frustrating. Carrie Coon is a phenomenal actress and her character in this feels real purely because she’s Carrie Coon. I know these movies aren’t about the characters, but I’ve seen her in Gone Girl and The Leftovers so I’m just disappointed she’s been underused again. And Paul Rudd’s character arc, centered around trying to feel confident as a step-dad, is under-developed and only works because he’s Paul Rudd. Back to him later.
Finn Wolfhard is barely in this, and were this to be a better movie, all the dialogue and scenes with Lucky and Podcast would go to him. Not that I loved him in the first one, or his character in Stranger Things or most of the roles he plays. I’m sure he’s a nice person, but I instinctually dislike him. We’re the same age (I look five years older than him at least) and he’s in a bunch of big Hollywood stuff, and there’s just something in my gut that wants him, Millie Bobby Brown and Billie Eilish to fail. And if you’re reading this and super successful and within a five year range of my age, I probably want you to fail. I might like you and your work, but please fail. Anyway, his character arc is “I’m 18 and I want to drive the Ecto-1 and be treated like an adult.” He has an inconsequential Slimer adventure. And at the end he’s allowed to drive and that’s it. Also Patton Oswalt is in this movie for one scene, as a language specialist who adds even more exposition to the mix about frozen man. I love him. Give his lines to one of the other guys.

When Two Movies Intersect and Studios Interfere
Like I said, there are too many characters and I’m pretty sure that the last act was changed by the studio. All these disparate plotlines converge at the firehouse after frozen man is unleashed in the last 20 minutes of the movie and all eleven characters unite to inspire Kumail Nanjiani to use his vague fire powers to stop him. At this point, instead of the main team (Wolfhard, Rudd, Coon, and Grace) putting on giant red ghostbusters coats and going to the roof to fight the giant monster, like they do in the trailer, which doesn’t happen, all the old people suit up too and they all ineffectually run around headquarters trying to blast frozen man to death. But frozen man freezes them all.
And then the dead ghost girl uses her ghost match to light Kumail’s Fire Master powers and they beat him and banish him to another dimension instead of doing something new. They just shoot slightly more blasts at him and the ghosts don’t escape. It’s an anti-climactic ending that makes it feel even more like the movie was all filmed on sets or green screen and none of the original team needed to be there. A better version of this movie would have the new team busting ghosts on screen throughout, only for everything to hit the fan and the original team to all be frozen. And then they have to come up with a clever idea to trap and destroy frozen man (Cool design) maybe still involving cool scientist James Acaster and Fire Master Kumail Nanjiani in a way that doesn’t pull focus. But that doesn’t happen. So interestingly, this movie with a lot of interesting concepts about what these ghosts really are, while also focusing far too much on what came before, ends up stuck between world-building and rehashing. But for me, there’s more substance to this than the last one and the jokes that there are between this new generation of comedians are enjoyable. If they didn’t focus so much on the past and “passing the baton” this could have been more than the sum of its many parts.

Favorite Bits
– Dan Aykroyd’s YouTube show largely involves him finding that objects linked to loved ones are not in fact haunted or possessed but he hits them with a giant hammer anyway.
– Anything James Acaster does or says.
– It’s completely unnecessary, but when Dan Aykroyd decides to go to the library for help, him, Podcast and Phoebe drive there in the Ecto-C, a motorcycle with a sidecar and a rail gun attached to it. Cool stuff.
– I like the design of frozen man, who has a name that I won’t bother to write down. It’s a weird fake hard to write one and he’s barely in it.
– Paul Rudd is the best, and as I said above, his arc of trying to simultaneously be a better dad and a meaner dad to kids he’s not the dad of is scarcely weaved throughout. But the bits there are are all good.
– There was a funny scene where Bill Murray is interviewing Kumail to determine if he’s got some sort of fire powers by throwing pens at him. I also appreciated how tired and old Bill Murray looks and how little of a shit he clearly gives about being in these movies. If these movies are meant to be The Force Awakens for Ghostbusters, he’s the Harrison Ford, if Harrison Ford didn’t put a single ounce of effort into his performance.
– I like very much the design of the firehouse and the machinery within it, everything seems very tactile.
– When frozen man first breaks out of his prison orb, he goes looking for the Fire Master to defeat them and first kills a smoke shop owner at a shop called “The Fire Master”. It’s a cheap gag, but I liked it.

Overall Rating: 6/10 (I wouldn’t mind another one of these and I’m sure there will be one, but I really really hope they don’t just make the same movie again. I cannot emphasize enough, the only reason this movie works at all is because there are some new things and they didn’t just say “Let’s rehash the first movie but in the middle of nowhere”.)
Rudd Rating: 8.5/10(We’re still not at peak Rudd, I’m very excited for his upcoming movies Death of a Unicorn, The Invite, and Friendship for the possibility of more comedic weird movies. I miss the Paul Rudd of Role Models and I Love You, Man. More than that, I miss the writing side of Paul Rudd that made the first two Ant-Man movies fun and Role Models and Party Down funny in a real and depressing way. Watch Party Down, he’s not in it, but he co-created it.)