GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Andy's Review

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AndyDursin
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GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Andy's Review

#1 Post by AndyDursin »

Looks like a whole lotta "meh" for the JUMANJI crowd again. With oddly most of AFTERLIFE's original cast having all moved together from Canada to New York City.

Still can't get over the irony of all the years Bill Murray refused to make a third movie, and yet here he is, dying to get involved in another bland corporate rehash.


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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#2 Post by AndyDursin »

William Atherton lives!


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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#3 Post by Monterey Jack »

"Who's alive from the original movie who will return our calls...?"

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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#4 Post by Bill R. Myers »

I understand the corporate rationale to keep cranking these out, but the original looks more than ever like a lightning in a bottle classic 40 years later. If the trailer for this means anything the CGI is terrible and there's not one good joke.

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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#5 Post by AndyDursin »

They're basically not even trying to make a comedy. I wrote that AFTERLIFE felt like a sequel to a feel-good Spielberg fantasy, not an irreverent, genre-blending smash, yet GHOSTBUSTERS -- be it the cartoon that followed or the video games or whatever -- has always carried an attraction to kids, and that's the market Sony is after now.

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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#6 Post by Monterey Jack »

Will they remember the JOKES this time...?

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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#7 Post by AndyDursin »

I wouldn't go in expecting lots of comedy unless Kumail and Patton Oswalt are there only for humorous support. They've even said their model is more functioning as an episode of THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS than anything else. That's part of the issue -- Sony reconfigured the franchise into a fanboy/"family friendly" demographic and they're appealing more to that crowd than the people who used to watch Bill Murray movies.

What's hugely ironic is seeing Murray just groveling and trying to make some $$ at this point, after years of turning down one failed GHOSTBUSTERS III attempt after another.

And just remember Ernie Hudson said this script goes a direction "wouldn't want it to" but he's still taking the check :lol:

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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#8 Post by Paul MacLean »

I've completely lost track of the Ghostbusters franchise.

Does this one star the kids, or did they go back to the unfunny women? Or is it a completely new set of characters?

(My question is rhetorical -- I don't really care.)

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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#9 Post by AndyDursin »

Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson seemed...less than enthused on the talk show circuit. Murray on Fallon made a snarky comment or two then brought out a card of the entire cast, which seemed bigger than a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza -- all for a 109 minute sequel (which I think was his point). You want the kids? Check. You want the old cast? Check! Paul Rudd? Check. Add in Oswalt and Kumai Nanjiani? Why not! Bill Atherton? Hey he's still alive too. It's....ridiculous. Anyway Theo wanted another birthday party where we rented out a local theater screen so this was the movie of choice for his 4th grade classmates this weekend -- we're all seeing it one way or another! :lol:

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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#10 Post by AndyDursin »

Ugh...
, Phoebe stumbles into a star-crossed lovers subplot, in which she falls for a ghost girl named Melody (Doctor Sleep's Emily Alyn Lind). Swiftly, Phoebe is established as a queer character in a sapphic flirtation. Following a cliched path of coming-of-age queer stories, Phoebe feels so isolated by her friends and family — though because of ghostbusting, not her sexuality — that she's desperate to get closer to her crush. This leads to a troubling grand gesture that plays alarmingly close to a suicide attempt. Nitpickers will note Phoebe offers a disclaimer ahead of the act that it "isn't lethal," suggesting not permanent — so the effect is more Ghost Dad coma zone. But in depiction, it's nonetheless grim and could be triggering.
And I mean, this is no shocker either:
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire was largely shot in Georgia and looks like it. Exteriors in New York City can't make up for Kenan's apparent disinterest in depicting the culture and chaos of the iconic metropolis, where locals might shrug off the Titanic coming into dock at last. Instead, when icy havoc is unleashed, he offers a jarring sequence on a sunny Coney Island that looks like anything but, then a handful of aerial views of a wintry New York. The everyman on the street barely makes the montage.
https://mashable.com/article/ghostbuste ... ire-review

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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#11 Post by Monterey Jack »

Sure sounds like a side-splitting laugh riot, huh? :?

Somehow we've gone from a movie featuring Dan Akyroyd crossing his eyes while getting a spectral BJ into a movie about teen suicide.

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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#12 Post by AndyDursin »

Apparently they've tried jokes but this is such an obviously worked over corporate product that you know how effective it is. Plus half the scenes in the trailer aren't in the movie which is an obvious sign of trouble typically.

In its own way Sony has put its stamp on these GB films in the same way Disney has with Star Wars. Big corporation clinging to its IP and meddling with focus group testing etc. This one checks so many boxes and has so many cast members its amazing it isn't 3 hours long.

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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#13 Post by Monterey Jack »

AndyDursin wrote: Fri Mar 22, 2024 7:26 am This one checks so many boxes and has so many cast members its amazing it isn't 3 hours long.
AndyDursin wrote: Fri Mar 22, 2024 7:26 amPlus half the scenes in the trailer aren't in the movie which is an obvious sign of trouble typically.
There you go. :P

I'll see this...but not until the middle of next week. No burning desire whatsoever. I should be giddy seeing my childhood heroes suiting up again, but it's...just...sad. :( The same way it'll be vaguely sad for people who were in their teens around 2012 when a forty-five-year-old Jennifer Lawrence has to strap the bow & arrow on for a Hunger Games reboot a dozen years from now.

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Re: GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE - Trailer

#14 Post by AndyDursin »

GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE (**): Sequel to 2021’s “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” isn’t completely terrible and, with a solid rewrite or two, may have proven to be the first franchise sequel to measure up to Ivan Reitman’s 1984 classic.

Alas, I think we’ve by now seen the best efforts of writer/producer Jason Reitman and his cohort, Gil Kenan (here stepping into the director’s chair), and they’re simply not capable enough to deliver a satisfying comic fantasy of this sort.

Their plot kicks off stumbling out of the gate, by having the “Afterlife” Spengler family (Mom Carrie Coon, kids Finn Wolfhard and Mckenna Grace, plus Paul Rudd’s “Gary Grooberson”) already established as the new NYC Ghostbusters, working with the old guard hanging around (i.e. whenever time permits for a Bill Murray or Ernie Hudson cameo). A better idea for this movie might’ve been actually showing that transition from farm country to the big city, but Reitman and Kenan press the fast-forward button instead, and have to spend more than half of this film on exposition. Endless exposition, introducing new characters, old characters, side characters, over half of which serve no purpose — it’s so over-written and over-populated with people that it’s surprising another writer wasn’t brought in to clean up the script, which has the gang taking on a new menace that eventually breaks free and causes havoc — albeit only in the movie’s final half-hour.

With an unmanageably large cast, it’s not just “the old folks” who really don’t have much to do — even Carrie Coon serves no purpose being in this movie. A smarter rewrite might’ve had Coon and Rudd’s characters relegated to cameos as they “dropped off” the juvenile “Afterlife” cast to a “Ghostbusters” internship program, which would’ve enabled the younger players from its predecessor to be more effectively integrated with Dan Aykroyd’s Ray Stantz and crew. Yet an opportunity like that goes by the wayside here, so Finn Wolfhard gets a couple of scenes with Slimer but that’s it as they throw all the focus onto “Phoebe Spengler” and her relationship with a sassy female ghost. The other returning Afterlife kids are “along for the ride” but pretty much the movie has too many players and not enough heft to any of it, with most scenes functioning like a “spot the actor” game where characters come and go as they please, often completely arbitrarily.

What’s more, all the set-up is a lead-in for a, no pun intended, busted climax, where a lame looking CG’d demon walks around for a few seconds and then is beaten in a matter of minutes. All of the “spectacle” the movie has to offer is shown in the trailers and confined to an underwhelming, too-little-too-late climax.

At least there’s more of an attempt at humor in “Frozen Empire” over the previous movie — the weepy element of “Afterlife” is thankfully absent pretty much — but only Kumail Nanjiani nails it, bringing the comic energy this movie desperately needs, as an “everyman” who gets swept up in the adventure (shades, if only a bit, of Rick Moranis’ role in the original movie). If anything there should’ve been more of him — and less of everyone else — which is disappointing because even with a few good scenes here and there, “Frozen Empire” just doesn’t come together, while also tossing in some poorly judged PG-13 jokes (what’s a “sex dungeon” reference doing in a film clearly marketed towards family audiences?).

While the series is obviously “aging,” this time it’s just bad writing that sends this sequel into the pit of mediocrity along with all the other follow-ups in this franchise.

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