Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Director: Gil Kenan
Year Released: 2024
Rating: 1.5

This follow-up to 2021's reboot Afterlife has the scrappy ghost-hunting team of Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) along with Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon) and her kids Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) speeding around Manhattan collecting ghouls, except Phoebe gets "benched" for being a minor and then forms something of a "bond" with moody spirit Melody (Emily Alyn Lind) - elsewhere, a "secret testing facility" run by Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) "accidentally" releases a long-contained demon named Garraka, who turns the entire city into a popsicle.  It's (once again) a decent decision to bring back the (surviving) legacy characters from the original movies in the 80's - Dr. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) runs a curio shop of "haunted" objects while Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) just so happens to be in the vicinity - and the "newer" cast commits to the idea, but the movie becomes increasingly dumber the longer it carries on, cribbing from previous entries and continuously making poor decisions (like animating one of the New York Public Library Lions).  It needed quite a bit more humor to balance things out: not even stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani can do much, and Murray's in there to collect a paycheck and probably make some martinis (not that anyone can blame him).