Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire review: A serviceable franchise entry that tugs on '80s nostalgia

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire opens with what’s meant to be a thrilling car-chase ride through lower Manhattan, where we get to see the new Ghostbusters—that’d be the Spengler family (plus Gary!)—in action. Mom, boyfriend, and kids (one now 18, he’ll have you know) are clearly settling in just fine in New York City. They’ve taken over the old fire station that used to house those old Ghostbusters. And in that frenetic first scene, where they all band together to trap a Hell’s Kitchen sewer dragon, we are invited to see how the old has become new again. It’s the old firehouse and the old Ectomobile, but this is a brand new team in a New York City that, actually, feels not that different from the kind Spengler Sr. and his crew roamed in the 1980s. Therein lies the appeal, however limited, of Gil Kenan’s latest franchise entry: it’s gone back to basics—it’s playing the hits!—with only a sprinkling of new or modern or even fresh energy.

The Hell’s Kitchen sewer dragon fiasco, which finds the Ghostbusters having heavily damaged city property sets up an intriguing new wrinkle in Ghostbusters lore: no longer will New Yorkers be left to wonder who they’re gonna call when things get weird, but as bureaucrat-turned-mayor Walter Peck (William Atherton) puts it, they’re now left to wonder who’s gonna pay for all the physical havoc they’re wreaking. Scolded by Peck, then, Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon, a welcome vision on screen, as ever) is forced to admit that working with her 15-year-old daughter Phoebe (McKenna Grace, the beating heart of the film) may not be the wisest of choices she’s making these days. Best the teenager leave the ghostbusting to her, Gary (Paul Rudd, arguably playing the most Paul Rudd character that ever Paul Rudded), and her older brother Trevor (Finn Wolfhard, who intermittently disappears from the film entirely for no discernible reason).

Phoebe is not known for taking such talking-tos seriously. She’s incensed that despite being such a natural ghostbuster she’ll now be sidelined, unable to follow with what she believes is her birthright. Thankfully, a wildly ridiculous plot involving a chess-playing ghost (Emily Alyn Lind), a huckster whose family history may have primed him for grander things (Kumail Nanjiani), and the arrival of a curious orb containing what may be an ancient evil ready to put all of New York City into freezing peril, will give Phoebe plenty to reasons to keep donning the Ghostbusters uniform and hoisting the proton pack she so adores.

If you’re wondering how the original Ghostbusters factor into this narrative, worry not. Jason Reitman and Kenan have deftly found ways of folding the likes of Dr. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), Dr. Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson)—and yes, even Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) and Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) into the lives of the Spenglers—who happily left their lives in Oklahoma behind to return the franchise to its Big Apple roots. It is Ray who first comes across the metal orb that becomes key to Frozen Empire’s story (dating as it does to pre-Sumerian civilizations); he’s turned his interest in the supernatural into a fanciful side hustle wherein he acquires objects with high psychic energy (i.e. haunted objects) into a web series that may be the film’s one nod to this story taking place in 2024. Those objects, in turn, help Winston with his newfangled Paranormal Research Center where, ideally, all the ghosts who are now clogging up the fire station’s ghost-storage containment unit will be transferred. Which is good, since unexplainable cracks have begun to suggest that the 40-year-old contraption may have reached capacity. (Try not to see any kind of metaphor in that premise, I dare you).