Movie Review: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

One would have thought, that the producers and owners of the Ghostbusters franchise that started in 1984 – 40 years ago, would have learned from the low ratings of the last movie “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”, released in late 2021 that it was time to try and save this franchise before it was too late. Unfortunately the latest, and hopefully last installment, “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” is even worse than the last film.

What is most tragic is that everybody knows that the first Ghostbusters movie and the second one, released in 1989 were both good movies. Given that the screenwriters and producers had two solid templates to work from, it makes no sense that the last two movies have been so bad. The first problem is that both these films are almost completely devoid of any humor, which is the number one reason why the first two movies worked so well. Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd were very funny in the first two installments, but in these last two sequels, Murray is rarely in either movie and both Akroyd and Murray are never funny. In the case of Akryod and Murray, the obvious solution would be to allow them to create their own lines using improvisation; this alone would have made this latest bad Ghostbusters movie much better.

The other problem is the scene-to-scene jumping without any connections between the last scene or enough explanation to satisfactorily describe why anything is happening. Another problem is that a great deal of these almost 2 hours are very boring and I remember looking at my watch too many times, hoping that this mostly bad experience would soon be over.

The cast includes the same actors from the last sequel, who are the relatives of Dr. Egon Spengler, played by the late Harold Ramis, including Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, and Mckenna Grace, with new cast members Kumail Nanjiani and Patton Oswalt. For the second time in a row, the screenwriters and director once again made the normally excellent comedic actor Paul Rudd boring.

Due to the poor reviews in 2021 for the last Ghostbusters movie, I am surprised that they made a second attempt so soon. Most likely the producers thought that because of the guaranteed built in audience, this latest film will still make money, no matter how bad it is. Unfortunately they may be right about this, which is why so many bad sequels are made.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie is a too high 46% with my rating only 20% and a big – miss this one and see the first two movies instead recommendation.