CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) - I was looking on Netflix for something to watch and it was recently added so I thought "why not?" The answer to that question, if you are wondering yourself, is that this is so incredibly slowly paced that I could barely believe it, especially for what is aiming to be a kid-friendly action adventure movie. It's take literally 90 minutes to go to the "frozen New York" part that the title and trailers suggested would be the main plot of the movie...and even then you just get a few shots of frozen New York with all the action happening in the firehouse. I guess I will praise it a bit for coming up with a new story and not just copying the plot of a previous movie like Ghostbusters: Afterlife did. Except it still has lots of "hey, remember that!" moments and a villain who asks "are you the [funny name]". And, in theory, I wouldn't mind a movie about the new Ghostbusters family having fun adventures in New York as the more serious plot plays out in the background. Except there's hardly any fun ghostbusting action for that first 90 minutes. The most successful story thread is the one with Phobe making friends (girlfriends?) with a ghost teenage girl. Mckenna Grace and Emily Alyn Lind work well together and their scenes are the only part where the movie feels a bit like its own thing and not just trying to be a franchise or whatever. Even then though the movie chickens out on having them kiss (why else would Phoebe turn herself into a ghost if not to touch her?) and it ends up feeling like we skip a scene as they go from just getting to know each other to "I'll turn into a ghost for you!" really fast. There's a ton of characters introduced and really you could cut like 3 of them without making any difference. Finn Wolfhard does literally nothing except get slimed a couples of times. Kumail Nanjiani plays his stock character and it did occur to me after that he made no impact on the plot at all despite supposedly having a special destiny (they could have just had Phoebe defeat the villain without his help.) James Acaster was a bit distracting. Bill Murray does his usual half-assed "yes its Bill Murray" thing. Halfway through Ray (I'll give Dan Akroyd some credit for actually giving a damn and making an effort) says he knows someone who can help and they got to the library from the original movie and I thought "okay, it's going to be the ghost librarian! That's a nice tie-in with Phoebe's story! She can talk too!" But no it's just Patton Oswalt as another human exposition character (we do get a ghost librarian cameo to remind us of the original movie.) This isn't funny enough to be a successful comedy, doesn't have enough action stuff to be a good action movie, and only a couple of the emotional beats really hit. Not recommended unless you're a bustin' completioniest.
Maybe I'm thinking about this too much (probably!) but I was sure in 'Afterlife' the kids had never heard of the Ghostbusters and didn't even seem to think that ghosts were real. But this one has New York still full of ghosts. Who was stopping it from getting completely over-run by the undead for the last 35 years if the Ghostbusters split up? If there's only one Ghostbuster team IN THE WORLD why aren't there ghosts everywhere completely fucking everything up? How did that mayor stay in power for 40 years if everyone hates him? Okay yeah I'm thinking about it too much.
Maybe I'm thinking about this too much (probably!) but I was sure in 'Afterlife' the kids had never heard of the Ghostbusters and didn't even seem to think that ghosts were real. But this one has New York still full of ghosts. Who was stopping it from getting completely over-run by the undead for the last 35 years if the Ghostbusters split up? If there's only one Ghostbuster team IN THE WORLD why aren't there ghosts everywhere completely fucking everything up? How did that mayor stay in power for 40 years if everyone hates him? Okay yeah I'm thinking about it too much.
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