'Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire' is another frightening disappointment

Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) and the Spengler family (Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace) leave Oklahoma and set up shop in the famous Hook & Ladder 8 firehouse in New York, where a strange orb containing an ancient evil is on the loose. Banding together with a descendant (Kumail Nanjiani) of the orb's caretaker, as well as the original Ghostbusters (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson) and some new ones (James Acaster, Celeste O'Connor), they must stop the ancient evil before it freezes New York...

There are a lot of easy comparisons to make between 'Jurassic Park' and 'Ghostbusters'. It's culturally beloved, the kind that's always a welcome distraction on TV or a long-enough flight where you've gone through all of the movies and TV shows you were supposed to watch. Yet, the sequels have never even come to living up to the impact and the quality of the original. Indeed, as the years have worn on, it becomes readily apparent that it should have stopped with the first one and gone no further. Yet, because of capitalism, we're here at Sequel No. 4 and no better off. All that remains is the shadow of what made us love the first one, and it's beginning to recede.

Where 'Ghostbusters: Afterlife' trafficked in a po-faced kind of nostalgia, culminating with one of the most soulless uses of CGI in recent memory, 'Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire' instead tries to emulate the original - but only so far. It's back in New York, back in the Tribeca firehouse, and just about all of the original cast - they still couldn't coax Rick Moranis out of semi-retirement - are back for their waves at the camera. Bill Murray turns up for all of maybe two or three scenes and riffs a little, while Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson are instead on exposition duties. Annie Potts and William Atherton, equally, turn up for a scene or two but it's ultimately a hollow pursuit. None of them are remotely engaged or interested.

What made the original so much fun was the knowledge that none of the cast back then was taking it quite so seriously. Murray, for example, only agreed to the movie on the agreement that Columbia Pictures would bankroll his first dramatic turn in 'The Razor's Edge'. Here in 'Frozen Empire', Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon are trying to get the same kind of improvisational spirit going, but the chug-along pace of the thing never gives it a chance. Coon is a gifted performer with comedic talents, and you only need to look at her droll sense of humour in the third season of 'Fargo' to catch it. Likewise, Paul Rudd has enough depth and skill to generate humour out of any interaction (we've got first-hand experience of this), but he's never given a chance. Meanwhile, Mckenna Grace is given a thin subplot involving a ghost played by Emily Alyn Lind while Finn Wolfhard battles a familiar ghost that's played for gross-out humour.

Gil Kenan is not a director with a sense of comedy in his work. 2015's 'Poltergeist' was an unremarkable legacy sequel, while 'City of Ember' was an entirely forgettable adventure from the YA heydays of 2008 that squandered our own Saoirse Ronan alongside Bill Murray and Tim Robbins. Here, it's a similar effort in that it assembles a great cast, but gives them almost no opportunity to be funny or let funny happen. It's so caught up in rattling off technobabble like it's a bad 'Star Trek' episode and being far too serious with itself for its own good. In the end, 'Frozen Empire' wrings out what's left of the original in the hope of eking out its existence. Seeing as how 'Ghostbusters' is about battling the spirits of those who cannot pass over to the other side, 'Frozen Empire' is a reminder that this franchise has long since turned into dust.