Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

After so many mishandled or abandoned series — from “Fantastic Beasts” to “Narnia” to “Percy Jackson” — it’s nice to see one that’s heading in the right direction.

Until Ghostbusters decides if it wants to throw its lot in with one era or the other, it’s always going to be between two worlds. And that purgatory makes for a middling experience that doesn’t quite satisfy.

This newest franchise entry is built on nostalgia and a stacked cast, but not enough to make it worth watching.

It's like the scriptwriters just devoured some plates of Ghostbusters' stuff and went barf... none of it makes any sense.

The plot is pretty much a cut-and-paste duplication of the original film.

There's a lot of self-referential backslapping throughout the film, but overall the problem is that there's too much going on. It's like the filmmakers couldn't figure out what story to tell, so they just threw everything into the mix.

With thinly spread plot and characters, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a nostalgia-choked highlight reel that’s for the fans and for the fans only.



It's more or less what I was afraid it was going to be based on the trailers.

The thing about Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is that it tries to do far too much all at once, and ends up feeling utterly overstuffed.

The weight of the film is largely carried by McKenna Grace's Phoebe, who chafes at being excluded from the specter battling shenanigans because of New York's strict paranormal child labor laws, or something.