Time to permanently park the Ghostbusters’ Ectomobile
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Starring Mckenna Grace, Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, James Acaster, Celeste O’Connor, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, William Atherton. Written by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman. Directed by Gil Kenan. Opens Friday at theatres everywhere, with Thursday previews. 114 minutes. STC
⭐️⭐️ (out of 4)
Peter Howell
Movie Critic
Complaining about formula in a “Ghostbusters” movie feels a bit like moaning about finding cobwebs in a haunted house. You know what to expect going in.
The 40-year-old comedy franchise started by late Canadian mirth master Ivan Reitman is built around familiar elements that fans expect and want, everything from the bickering title phantom hunters to gobbling green ghost Slimer and Ray Parker Jr.’s fist-waving theme song. And that’s OK, for the most part.
Where formula fails is when it overwhelms the story, something that’s all too evident in “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” the fifth and hopefully final film in the series. It’s all too much of nothing special and all too little of anything funny or fun.
Screenwriters Jason Reitman (Ivan’s son) and Gil Kenan (who also directs) cling to franchise basics like a security blanket, even more so than in their previous film, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” which the younger Reitman directed.
Their desire to connect the wisecracking characters and story of the 1984 “Ghostbusters” to the more earnest 21st-century younger players seems increasingly born of desperation rather than inspiration.
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