3/5 stars
This fifth instalment of the Ghostbusters franchise starts with an elegant quote from Robert Frost, which is about the last time this overstuffed script gets poetic.
The Spengler family – Callie (Carrie Coon), her kids Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and new partner Gary (Paul Rudd) – have moved to New York and are now living their best ghostbusting lives in the old firehouse where the original team trapped all paranormal activity. Except that the containment unit that houses all the ghouls is on its last legs.
There are bigger problems: Phoebe has been banished from the ghostbusting business by Mayor Peck (William Atherton) after a disastrous and destructive attempt to capture a sewer-occupying ghost dragon.
Then there is a powerful brass orb, containing a force that can seemingly freeze all that touches it, that has fallen into the hands of former Ghostbuster Dr Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) after a chancer (Kumail Nanjiani) sells it to him.
Oh, and there is a 16-year-old ghost named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind) who has ulterior reasons for befriending Phoebe.
Factor in appearances by Stantz’s old buddies Winston (Ernie Hudson), Janine (Annie Potts) and Peter (Bill Murray), as well as Phoebe and Trevor’s friends Podcast (Logan Kim) and Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) and it is a very full house.
By the time all come together to charge up their proton packs, that makes around 10 people wearing the brown Ghostbusters overalls. Even Janine, the gang’s one-time receptionist, gets to suit up.
But realistically this is too many characters in a story that becomes increasingly chaotic. If you are looking for an emotional thread, you just about get it from Gary working out how to parent Callie’s kids when he is not the biological father, but it is flimsy at best.
The film is also guilty of fan service, from returning ghosts like the greedy green blob Slimer to trips to the New York Public Library.
There are some funny moments, though, such as Rudd’s dry reading of the original Ghostbusters theme tune, and British comic James Acaster is very amusing as techie Lars Pinfield, at one point claiming a CD Walkman has been “possessed by an evil Spin Doctors CD”.
But largely, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is what you might expect for a fifth franchise outing: passable but predictable.