A Brief History
On March 22, 2024, the fifth movie in the Ghostbusters franchise makes its wide release across the United States, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, a movie featuring some of the original characters and actors from the 1984 smash hit film as well as some of the new crew introduced in the 2021 third edition in the lineal series, Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Digging Deeper
The big stars from yesteryear, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson are back, along with original characters played by William Atherton, and Annie Potts. Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, and Mckenna Grace form the core of the new ghost busting crew, with some help from Celeste O’Connor and Logan Kim. Patton Oswalt makes an appearance, and a fetching ghost is played by Emily Alyn Lind. A bit of comic relief is provided by Kumail Nanjiani as the scheming but affable “Firemaster.”
Of course, we watched the original film to ready us for the preview showing on March 19, 2024, and the main differences we noted included the improved special effects and the lack of a monumental supernatural monster to fight, such as the gigantic Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the first film or the animated Statue of Liberty in the second film. Although somewhat larger than any human, the antagonist in Frozen Empire is not colossal and can even fit indoors in large enough rooms. Another difference in the direction of the plot is the focus on the character of Phoebe, a 15 year old girl. This focus makes the movie seem sort of aimed at the pre-teen and teen girl audience, though the focus on Phoebe is not relentless as the movie kicks around in a slightly disjointed way.
Effects, acting, directing and cinematography are all excellent, something we would expect from an iconic franchise and a budget of $100 million. The 115 minute running time seemed just about right, and overall the movie should rank appropriately in the series. Scattered laughter was heard throughout the movie from the test audience, and there was even some clapping at the end. Stick around for mid and post credit scenes. We were suitably entertained, as expected.
Despite minor innuendo at times, the movie seems to us to be family friendly unless young children are particularly afraid of ghosts. Otherwise, feel free to take the whole family for some reliable entertainment.
Our favorite part of the movie? Definitely the mini-Stay Puft Marshmallow men!
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
McAllister, Matt. Ghostbusters: The Inside Story: Stories from the cast and crew of the beloved films. Hero Collector, 2020.
Wallace, Daniel. Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History. Insight Editions, 2015.
The featured image in this article, a photograph of Dr. Zar with a poster for for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire after having attended an advance screening of this film, was taken by his mother and is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
