McDaniel
“Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” is choppily edited and fails to effectively incorporate its laundry list of characters, but you can’t convince me that it’s not nostalgic, paranormal fun.
Now residing in the familiar New York City firehouse of the original movies, the Spengler descendants and former teacher/kinda-sorta father figure Gary (Paul Rudd) are cruising the streets, blasting lasers and hunting a host of ghostly creatures.
The surviving original Ghostbusters Peter (Bill Murray), Ray (Dan Aykroyd), and Winston (Ernie Hudson) all re-enter the picture when a mysterious object holding an ancient, world-killing evil is sold to Ray by clueless hustler Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani).
Nanjiani is a scene-stealer as the dimwit with a magical destiny to discover. It’s a pretty significant character to be casually dropped into modern day earth. But per usual, his comedic delivery earns regular chuckles from the audience.
Surprisingly, the most popular of the OGs, Murray, feels like the most obligatory addition to the cast, with Peter not contributing to the film the same way that Ray and Winston do.
Though I must say, after not seeing Aykroyd in a lot of movies in recent years, it feels nice to see him getting some love on the big screen. Again, there’s no shortage of nostalgia.
Meanwhile, it’s Winston’s new paranormal research facility, and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) the unruly teenager, who accidentally unleashes Garraka, the big, bad ghost from its mystical orb, threatening a new ice age on earth. And in a movie that features the light and cartoonish Slimer, Garraka is contrastingly dark and creepy.
There’s a lot going on in the script — a lot of mouths to feed creatively — and the way it jumps around, we have to assume there are a lot of connections happening unseen between scenes.
Nevertheless, I liked it better than the previous rendition, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife.” If the scope of this film is detrimental, its scale is wonderfully ambitious, because Garraka’s threat level is the highest the franchise has seen since its 1984 original.
3.5 / 5 Proton Packs
Scott McDaniel is an assistant professor of journalism at Franklin College. He lives in Bargersville with his wife and three kids.
