 Hello everyone, as you can see I'm flying solo today because I'm doing an impromptu review of Ghostbusters Frozen Empire. I originally was not going to do a review on this movie. First of all, there's too many reviews out there, it's saturated, there's so many Frozen Empire reviews, it's crazy. So I thought, what's the point of throwing another shitty review on top of a pile of shitty reviews? But I decided to do one for two reasons. I'm a huge Ghostbusters fan. Ghostbusters 1984 is my favorite movie of all time. I love that movie to death. I've seen it more than any other movie ever made. So I'm invested in Ghostbusters. As you can see, you know, I got a jumpsuit behind me, I got all this shit over here. And I put it out there to see if anyone was interested in my thoughts on the movie. And enough people said, yeah, go ahead, shoot a review. So here we go. It's noon on a Monday. I'm drinking Danakroyd's Crystal Skull Vodka, which is fitting because Danakroyd is the brainchild of Ghostbusters. So here we are drinking at noon, doing a Ghostbusters review. It can't get much better than this. So before we get into Ghostbusters Frozen Empire, just to recap what I thought about Ghostbusters afterlife. I did a review on that, but if you don't want to take the time to watch that, that's fine. In broad strokes, I liked the idea of Ghostbusters afterlife, of continuing the story with the Spangler family. I hated the fact that they relied on an old villain and too much nostalgia in the movie. Then the trailer for Frozen Empire comes out. And I thought, man, that's really the movie I wanted afterlife to be for the most part. But it's just a trailer. It's hard to judge from the trailer, right? But I was excited. Early reviews started to pour out from people who are able to see the movie early and it didn't look good. People were really critical of it. I didn't really read or watch any full reviews. Just the titles alone were enough to give me an idea of what people thought. And I was kind of dreading the worst. I was like, Saturday before watching the movie all day, I was like, oh man, am I going to hate this? Is this really going to be like a bad experience? Because the last thing I wanted it to be really is mediocre. I think mediocre would be worse than bad. And I was already kind of planning a review in my brain thinking that would be the tagline. It's worse than bad. It's mediocre. I'm sitting in the theater before the movie starts and all these kids are around like kids, like four and five year old kids. Can it be a kids movie? Is that what they're marketing this towards now? Because the first movie kids liked it, but it was marketed towards kids. And then the trailers start playing before the movie all the coming attractions and it's all kids movies. It's like Garfield and shit like that. And I'm like, man, are they priming me for a kids movie? Because usually the trailers before the main feature are cut of the same cloth of the movie you're going to go see. And I was prepared for the worst. And I was thinking of all these things in my head like how I'm going to tackle a review, like little routines like, you know, I got a jumpsuit right over here. But this movie isn't even worth suiting up for. So I'm not going to bother. Then the movie started. And I'm going to tell you right now. I'm going to suit up. So now that I've suited up and taken the time to suit up tells you that this movie is worth the price of admission. And I think personally worth your time. My fears of this being a very kiddie movie steeped in the whole Marvel trend of editing and action instantly subsided with the opening sequence of this movie, which is a flashback. And I'm not going to go into too much detail about the flashback. And with this flashback they instantly kind of set the tone for this movie, which is dark. And a dark sense of humor. I laughed at something very dark right in the opening sequence of this movie. And instantly I felt okay. I think things are going to be okay here. I like the way that they're taking this movie. Quick summary of the plot without getting into too many spoilers and then we'll go into what I liked about the movie, what I didn't like, and also why I think this would have made a better Netflix show in the long run. And Ghostbusters Frozen Empire, they've reopened the Ghostbusting business, which is being financed by Winston Zedmore because he is a multimillionaire now. Gary Gruberson from the first movie along with Callie, Trevor, and Phoebe Spangler are basically the Ghostbusters. And you get a sense of what life is like in the firehouse. Now like there's a great scene where they're doing laundry next to the containment unit. It's like, yeah, Ghostbusters gotta do their fucking laundry. And I always thought that it was silly that a miner would be allowed to be a Ghostbuster. And they tackled that right away. Right off the bat, Walter Peck, This man has no dick, who's now the mayor of New York, calls the man and says, Well, she can't be a Ghostbuster. This is too dangerous for a miner. And I love how they tackled that situation right away. So Phoebe is banned from Ghostbusting. Also, Gary Gruberson, who's involved with Phoebe's mom Callie, is kind of torn because he wants to be a father to Phoebe, But he also wants to be like the fun loving friend slash teacher that he was. And he's having real problems with enforcing discipline with Phoebe. Because Ghostbusting is now flourishing again, well Ray's occult books run by Ray Stance is also flourishing. And he's been purchasing all these haunted rare artifacts that are then taken to the research facility funded and run by Winston, Where they do experiments and research on these haunted items. One of the items Ray buys is this mysterious orb, which we find out later, Is actually like almost an old school ghost trap, which contains an evil spirit called Garaka, Which is our main villain of the movie. Phoebe feels really left out about not being able to be a Ghostbuster, And she's lonely and she actually of all things befriends a ghost, Which I thought was a really interesting plot twist and a little bit of a spoiler, But I'm gonna leave it at that because a lot more evolves with that storyline. Winston and his research crew over at the research center have this orb, And of course they accidentally opened the thing, releasing the evil spirit of Garaka, All shit hits the fan, and of course the Ghostbusters have to deal with it. That in very broad strokes is the plot of Ghostbusters Frozen Empire. So the first thing I'm gonna say about Ghostbusters Frozen Empire is I actually did like it more than I liked Ghostbusters after life. And the main reason being is this is what I personally wanted out of a Ghostbusters movie. I wanted that kind of real good balance between the new crew and the old guys, And I really feel like we got it in this, and we got a new story, we got a new bad guy, And it moved the whole plot and all the character stories got to move forward. It's not that I hated afterlife, I just thought a lot of it was unnecessary, But you do need afterlife to get to Frozen Empire, so it does have its place. Another thing I really liked about this movie, again more so than afterlife, It had a much darker tone, it had scarier moments, and all the humor was way better, And much darker, which is what we want in the Ghostbusters film. Ghostbusters, at its essence, is pretty dark humor, and I thought we got that here, And not only dark, but more adult humor, it wasn't really kiddy. Sounds like you got at least two people in there already, might be a little crowded. A lot of the jokes were adult jokes, much like the first movie, I really don't think that this movie was made for kids, Even though there's a lot of elements that kids would enjoy and appreciate. It is legitimately funny, unlike afterlife, I did laugh out loud watching this movie, Multiple times, I don't think I laughed once during afterlife. And a lot of the humor does come from one source, And that is Kumail Nanjiani who plays Nadim, The character who sells this orb to Ray Stance. He really steals the show as far as the humor goes in this, And I'm completely fine with that, I'm fine with one person being the silly character, Leaving room for everyone else to kind of play it straight, But for one character to be kind of the humorous focal point, To me, works a lot better than having a whole cast of funny people. He very much so fills the shoes of Rick Moranis in this movie, Which I felt was missing a lot in Ghostbusters Afterlife, And I think they noticed it too. And this character has a lot more to do with the plot than the trailer leads you to believe, So I'm just gonna leave it at that. Of course McKenna Grace nails it again as Phoebe Spangler, And steals the show again, I'm totally fine with that. She's the star of these movies, The same way that Bill Murray was kind of considered the star of the first one. The whole cast is really pretty solid, Like there's not one bad performance of course in this movie because they're all killer actors. If anything the weakest link in this movie I think is Finn Wolfhard, And we're gonna get into that a little bit more when I talk about the negatives. Another thing I really enjoyed about this movie, And I think it's one thing that a lot of people disliked, Was they really took their time to flesh out these characters. There are a lot of subplots in this movie, And you need that, you just can't have a movie where it's all action, And it's all just fighting the bad guy because too much action gets boring too. The trailer really leads you to believe that this movie is gonna be a lot more action packed than it really is. And again I'm fine with that, I want to learn more about these characters, I want to feel for them and see what happens to them. Most of what you see in the trailer is all in the final act. Everything else in the movie was new to me and refreshing, Because let's face it a lot of these new trailers you see the trailer, That was the movie, I don't need to see the movie, I just saw it condensed into three minutes. That's not the case at all with this movie, They left a lot out of the trailer, And they actually put a lot in the trailer that's not in the movie, Which again I was fine with, These little subplots give a lot more substance to these characters. There's a great little subplot with Ray Stance and podcast, Where they are the ones doing the investigating and doing the research on what this orb is, And they kind of go off on their own and try to figure out what this is, And where it came from. And that does a great job of building those characters and expanding on even someone like Ray Stance, We've known for decades. Brings us to like a great scene that I loved in the movie, Where Winston is confronting Ray about going off where it's dangerous, He's like you're too old for this, you could have been killed, What are you doing, you know this is our golden years, We should be enjoying it, you shouldn't be out there still chasing ghosts. And it actually was a bit of a tear-jerker scene, I really love that scene between the two, Because you didn't really get that in afterlife, You didn't really get the old crew interacting with each other so much, And seeing how their relationship has changed, You get that in this movie. But at the same time, the old crew doesn't overshadow and steal from the new crew too much at all. The way that they share their screen time between the old and new, I thought was balanced very, very good. I also appreciated the fact that the nostalgia wasn't so shoved in your face, Like it was in afterlife. It's there, and then it's gone pretty quick. It's pretty minor. Another thing I loved about this movie is how much the cartoon series inspired it, And it's pretty blatant. And for me, it's welcomed, Because the cartoon did such a good job of capturing the spirit of the movie, But then expanding on the universe, And even expanding on these characters to the point where you kinda do believe It's the same characters from the movie, Even though they're voiced by a completely different cast. Incorporating elements of the cartoon into this movie really made it feel like it's all come full circle. There's that one character, Lars, You know, if you've seen him in the trailer, Obviously inspired by Egon Spangler's design in the cartoon. He's got the blonde hair, He's got the blue jumpsuit, He's got glasses on, It's pretty much Egon. The whole opening sequence where they're busting the Hell's Kitchen sewer ghost, Is right out of a Ghostbusters cartoon, Introducing all the new gadgets, Very much out of the cartoon. There's a scene where Ray hops on a motorcycle with a side cart called Ecto-C. Again, very much like the cartoon where they had all these different vehicles they'd have. You know, they had the helicopter. If you recall the cartoon, there's a couple of kids, Which were called the junior Ghostbusters, Who were part of like a fan club, Who'd follow the Ghostbusters around and help them every once in a while. Some people hated them, I didn't mind them. But Walter Peck says, What is this, the junior Ghostbusters? When referring to Phoebe, So I liked that little nod to the cartoon. The score from this movie I really liked too, And a lot of people were complaining about it, Saying it sounded too much like the original. Well, didn't you see Ghostbusters after life? That score was exactly the original. This is different. It is an original brand new score, Which takes hints and notes and cues from the original, But it's now doing its own thing with a new movie, So it sounds familiar, But it sounds new at the same time. As opposed to after life, it just sounded rehashed. The character development, the story, All the subplots, The way they balanced the new and old crew, I thought worked very very well. So overall I did really like the movie, Most of it I really enjoyed, And I had very little complaints, But there are some, So let's talk about some of the complaints. Much like Ghostbusters after life, This movie did have too many characters, And because it's only a two hour movie, You can only spend so much time with all these characters, So some characters do suffer to lack of screen time, And lack of development, Because there's just too many to keep track of. Finn Wolfhard's character Trevor, Like he could even not be in this movie, And it would have been fine. His whole little subplot with trying to track down The firehouse ghost, Slimer, Could completely be axed from this movie, And would have helped the pacing a bit more, Which I felt was a little off, Because there's so many characters, And so many subplots where it hurts the pacing, And gave more screen time to characters which needed it, Characters like Cali Spangler, I thought was almost completely left right out of this movie, Her character didn't move forward or develop much at all, Winston Zedemore should have been more in this movie, He was in it more than he was in Ghostbusters 2, He was in it more than he was in Ghostbusters Afterlife, But I still felt like he should have been in it more, I felt like he should have had equal amount of screen time, As Dan Ackroyd does, And Dan Ackroyd has a lot of screen time, And it's used very well, Like don't get me, that's not wasted screen time at all, But I thought that Winston should have had just as much, And giving that character the screen time it deserves, And there were some editing issues I think in this movie too, Where it was kind of structured in an odd way, Where they tease you that something was gonna happen, Which is fine, So like Lars puts his hand on the orb, And it freezes his hand, And then you see like ice start to form on New York streets, And you're like, Okay, Garaka's gonna bust out of the orb now, Like shit's gonna hit the fan now, But then it doesn't, And I thought the final act was a bit rushed, Like by the time Garaka gets out of the sphere, And they actually gotta do battle with this demon, The movie's pretty much over, I'm completely fine with all the time spent on the characters, Developing these subplots, But they should have got to the shit hitting the fan a little bit earlier, So there's a little bit more action near the tail end of the movie, And I think that was some people's complaints, Was there wasn't enough action and ghost busting, Which leads me to kind of my final thoughts, Is that this movie really should have been a long form Netflix style TV series, If they wanted to put all this stuff, All these characters, all these ideas, All these subplots into one thing, They should have stretched it out over a TV show, Which I think is what the franchise should do next, And if you would have taken all these subplots like in Frozen Empire, And kind of expanded all those into like a 45 minute episode, Where everyone gets their time to shine, And you get to expand on the story more, I think it would have made for a lot more compelling viewing, And I think at the end the viewer would have been more satisfied, And you can do the story more justice, In a long form episodic type series. So that's it, that's my thoughts on Ghost Busters Frozen Empire, I thought it was pretty damn solid, I thought it was better than mediocre, Did I love it? No I didn't love it, Did I like it? Yes, I'd say I liked it a lot, But I didn't love it, so if I were to give it like a star rating, I'd say maybe 3.75 stars out of 5 is probably what I'd give it. I liked it because it gave me time with the characters that I love, And it showed respect to those characters, And I think it respected the initial tone and vibe of the original movie. One problem with Ghost Busters now is it's become such a big thing, The fan base has grown so damn big over generations now, Like different generations of people love Ghost Busters for a different reason, And they all want to see something different out of a new movie, And I think that is kind of the problem, Because with a fan base so big with so many different age gaps, And you're gonna make a 2 hour movie and you're gonna narrow what you're gonna do down to this, What's the chance that everyone is gonna like it? It's gonna be pretty slim, there's just too many people to please at this point in time with Ghost Busters. Where the franchise goes from now, I don't know, there is an animated series in development, Which I'm looking forward to and I'm hoping they could really expand on the world a bit more, And give the movies a break for now. We've had two back to back and I think maybe it's a bit too much. I did like the movie a lot, I liked it more than Afterlife, And I can tell you that because when I saw Afterlife, I went to bed torn. I had trouble sleeping, I was torn on the movie, I didn't know what to think. When I came back from the theater from this one, I went to bed satisfied and slept pretty damn good, Not being torn about what I thought about the movie, it was pretty clear I liked it. And I am pretty critical of movies, you know, like I was pretty critical of Afterlife. I love Ghost Busters, Ghost Busters 84 is my favorite movie of all time. So yeah, I'd say go check out the movie, let me know what you think, And until then, keep drinking Crystal Skull Vodka!