_TL;DR: On my way out of the theater I saw a dad talking to his 6/7 year-old son: "Which one did you like better? The one we watched this morning at home [the original "Ghostbusters"] or this one?" The boy replied without hesitation: "I liked the one at home more."_ An exemplary example of corporate studio cowardice, _Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire_ is an unbalanced morass shaped into the form of a movie that only vaguely resembles the original. Most frustrating: Even though it's a confounding pastiche, buried underneath the cringe-worthy fan service, vapid dialogue, absurd plot holes, and pointless characters there were glimpses of a film that could have stood up to the 1984 classic, but if this movie shows us anything, it's that studios today would never, ever greenlight something as original and visionary as Ivan Reitman's masterpiece. Instead of a comedy with sprinklings of sci-fi, horror, and suspense, this _Ghostbusters_ feels like a bunch of scenes from each those different genres shoehorned together into something that could appeal to little kids while tugging at the nostalgic heartstrings of their parents. The result is cynical dreck. Silly sight gags bump up against cheap jump scares which transition into gross out humor. Instead of trying to build something unique, something with a singular vision, they took the genre classifications of the original and inserted elements of each one. It's paint-by-numbers movie making... and it stinks. Mckenna Grace is the heart of the story, and her Phoebe Spengler is the only character who goes through a meaningful story arc. (With the possible exception of Paul Rudd's Gary, but his story gets so little screen time that it's all but disqualifying.) She actually gives a pretty good performance, and the filmmakers could have used her journey to explore lots of ideas- things like the nature of reality and the coherence of the soul. There was even a chance to [spoiler]center a queer character in a touching way[/spoiler], but nothing goes beyond heavy inference, or it is explained away with technobabble. And as any _Star Trek_ fan will attest, when technobabble is used as an emotional escape hatch instead of a plot device, everything around it crumbles. Even the villain was a wasted opportunity. The O.G. _Ghostbusters_ villain, Gozer, was a Sumerian god. This new one is also a god of the same era. That's a rich vein to explore. Are the Ghostbusters modern incarnations of ancient warriors who helped rid the world of transdimensional beings in the earliest days of civilization? It's an idea that gets a fleeting mention (though only in relation to a secondary character), but, like all the other big ideas, is never explored. Instead of world-building we get a revisit to the New York Public Library and a meaningless bit of fan service. _Ghostbusters: Afterlife_ was a promising, if flawed, kick-start of the franchise. I'd hoped that with a return to New York and more involvement by one of the original's writers we'd get something at least marginally as entertaining as the first two of the series. I guess that I'll just keep on hoping.

Fucking awful. Paul Rudd plays a stuttering stepdad like always. Queer bating but with 15 year olds? Can’t even make the queers cool.

Wow that was sh*t. Effects were terrible. Did they do it on purposes to make it look like bad 80s special effect or do they just suck. Characters are also super annoying. I wanted to slap Paul, Finn and particularly MbKenna the whole time. I would have turned it off had I not passed out from boredom half way through.

I liked that it honored the original Ghostbusters but the whole story with Phoebe and the ghost is so stupid. The actress is boring af. The movie become boring too. Unoriginal plot.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is meh. It is the most meh movie I have seen this year. It is not a bad movie either, just painfully meh. There was zero hype for this movie before and after it came out. One might say this is a potential franchise killer, but if the franchise survived the 2016 version, this is not too bad. I do not have much to say here because the movie is not giving me much to work with in terms of talking about it. My engagement in writing this is very tricky. The performances are fine, the characters are there, the storyline is serviceable for a Ghostbusters movie, and the visual effects are decent. However, Bill Murray’s 'involvement' here is the most amusing aspect, and it does not have to do with writing or how his character is part of the film, but how transparent it is that Murray could not care less even if you paid extra. He does not say or do anything hilarious, just Murray not caring, and he does not hide it makes his scenes unintentionally funny. Speaking of which, the original four cast members return once again, with Dr. Peter Venkman (Murray), Dr. Raymond Ray Stantz (Aykroyd), Dr. Winston (Hudson), and Janine Melnitz (Potts). On paper, it may be exciting to see familiar faces from our beloved movie return once again and recapture the glory days. But watching it unfold on screen, I got the opposite effect. I was instead asking myself, “What are we doing here? Are we still doing this 40 years later?” The original 1984 film was never designed to be an epic franchise. It is a clever comedy about four hack frauds trying to run a business catching Ghosts and being so out of their depth with the supernatural. It is the lighting in a bottle film. That is the reason why the follow-ups did not work. Lighting striking twice is rare. Sometimes, it does. Sometimes, it doesn't. I do not know what the future holds for this franchise. Is it finished for good? No, because, in Hollywood, nothing is truly dead or over.