GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE

 

Mckenna Grace in GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE Year: 2024 Rates: **

Jason Reitman's GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE set up a rural family to become the new Ghostbusters, a cross between the original, created by his father Ivan Reitman along with main-idea-man Dan Aykroyd and the late Harold Ramis, and STRANGER THINGS... centered on a group of small town Middle-American teens more inspired by Steven Spielberg's classic cinema than anything by the patriarch Reitman...

While AFTERMATH had moments, the same primary problem exists in this sequel, Frozen Empire... there's simply no real flow between the now New York City-set character-development and their job busting ghosts...

Emily Alyn Lind in GHOSTBUSTERS

It simply doesn't seem like THESE characters are part of anything to do with paranormal activity, which is why real-life ghost-freak Dan Aykroyd is more part of the story, as a kind of cool uncle, than the original's glib everyman Bill Murray, who phones in a few brief scenes that aren't one bit funny...

The central figure again is Ramis's Egon's granddaughter, Phoebe, a kind of science-goth tomboy who, like Wynona Ryder in BEETLEJUICE, befriends ghosts: herein a beautiful young lady, and there's a more than noticeable lesbian influenced attraction, which should have been either delved into further or not touched at all... And that's the problem... scenes between the dead and living young ladies, or with Paul Rudd (who was the Rick Moranis of AFTERLIFE) trying to become a new stepdad, amounts to very little in a bland adventure/comedy that goes in one nostalgic ear and out the other.