I’m going to disappoint a lot of the other pundits out there. Mrs. Know-It-All and I just got finished watching Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, and I’ve seen the criticisms, all kinds of them. I’ve got a few things to say myself. But I enjoyed this installment, and I think it deserves to sit right there in line with the other movies. If you’re like me and you liked Ghostbusters II, you’re going to enjoy this one too.

We saw it in a theater, at an AMC, and I got the collectible. You’re supposed to put your popcorn in it, and they would’ve totally done it for me. I decided I’d rather be a geeky kid and keep it clean. I also came home with a new cup, which as far as I’m concerned is my new fun cup.

This is a spoiler review. I’m not doing the full recap I’d normally do, because I want you to go see the movie, so we’re picking and choosing.

A Movie That Feels Lived In

Her first impression was that it reminded her a lot of Afterlife, and I agree. It has the same energy. We both loved the new characters last time, and Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd still look so good together. There’s a moment in here where Paul Rudd becomes my new favorite person of all time.

The Spenglers, plus Paul Rudd’s Gary, have all moved into the firehouse. It’s been two years, Gary’s the stepdad now, she kept the Spengler name, and they’re working as Ghostbusters. The movie actually opens at that same firehouse in 1904, when it was still a fire department, Hook and Ladder number eight. The firemen get called out to an adventurers’ society, and they walk into a room where everything is frozen. I mean frozen, out of time. One of them touches something he shouldn’t, and it goes about as badly as it can go.

Then we’re in the present, chasing a spectral dragon through the streets, and this is where the movie won me over. Everything in it feels lived in. While they’re driving, the car loses power to all the ghostbusting gear, and Trevor has to get in there, fix some wiring, and turn it back on. He’s running the remote control trap. Phoebe’s back in the gunner seat, because the gunner seat was amazing. And when the thing gets too high in the sky, it’s mom to the rescue. Callie puts on the visor and the next thing you know they’ve got a drone trap. They’ve advanced since the last time we saw them.

That scene also tells you how the kids split the inheritance. Phoebe got the brains, and by that I mean she’s more like Egon in her mindset and the kind of science she’s into. Trevor is very Ray Stantz. He’s the one who got that car running again, he’s mechanically inclined, he’s got the fix-it stuff. Egon designed the proton packs and did all the heavy science work, and Ray built things. If Phoebe is theoretical physics, Trevor is applied.

And the city has caught up. Clearly this isn’t their first day on the job. At one point they tear past a couple of police officers, and the young cop asks if they should call it in, and the older one basically says why, they’re taking care of it. New York understands how this works again. We just happen to come in on the last straw of the city tolerating the damage.

Finally, Something That Isn’t Gozer

Something I really liked about this movie is that it expands the lore, and I actually commented about this on X recently. The first movie introduced Gozer, and everything since has been predicated on Gozer. We find out in this one that when Peck shut the containment unit off and it exploded, that Manhattan crossrip is what allowed Vigo the Carpathian to come back in the second movie. Then Afterlife was the full culmination of the Gozer storyline, which to me was no different than The Force Awakens revisiting its original. I think that’s okay after thirty years.

This one introduces something new, and I loved that, because the one thing the cartoon always did was introduce new elements. I grew up watching The Real Ghostbusters. Sure, you had your class one this and your class two that, but every season or so you’d get the big bad. That’s what this movie does. You’ve all seen him by now, the one with the horns, freezing everything.

I’d read an article where one of the producers said they took a lot of inspiration from the cartoon, and you can see it. The Ecto motorcycle is one hundred percent from the cartoon. Mrs. Know-It-All didn’t know that until I told her.

There’s a great little Easter egg too. The library administrator who called the Ghostbusters in the original movie is back, and they found that same actor to do it. That really worked.

The Institute, and Ray’s Golden Years

Winston has become their financial benefactor. It’s been years since the Ghostbusters officially did anything, everybody went off to do their own thing, and people forget that Winston has degrees of his own. Now he’s bankrolling them, and he’s built a whole ghost-studying institute.

The Institute is really cool. It’s a converted aquarium, so it’s all these huge spaces with little tiny aquariums inside the big one, and it’s perfect. For those of you playing at home, the gist is that they’ve taken the same technology that makes the trap and built it into rooms, so the ghosts can’t leave and can be observed. The barriers are charged with protons, which is a total Spengler move. You learn more about Egon’s science in this movie because of it. We also learn the firehouse containment unit is nearly out of room, so I can see how the aquarium comes into play from here.

Ray, meanwhile, does a show, much like the one you’re watching right now. People bring him cursed objects, he runs the PKE meter over them, he buys them, and he turns them in to Winston and his people to get the spirit out.

Every character still maintains their thing. The minute Ray gets involved, Dan Aykroyd hasn’t missed a beat. He seems like he has literally grown old inside the Ghostbusters world. There’s a wonderful moment after the kids nearly get hurt where Winston looks at him and says they’re too old for this, that these are supposed to be his golden years. And Ray looks at him, real sincerely, and says this is what he wants to do with his golden years. How can you take that away from him? They sprinkle it in earlier, too. He’s in his shop, the car goes by, and he gets that look on his face. Oh yeah, I remember those days. Dude, I get it. He wishes he could be in the field.

Where I’ll Give the Critics Some Ground

I saw a criticism online that said there were too many characters introduced. I felt like the movie balanced everyone fine. There isn’t a lot of character building, because we already know these characters. Phoebe gets a little, because she’s going through some stuff. Lucky is back on an internship, Podcast is back, and the only people we really meet are the new scientist kid who works for Winston and Kumail Nanjiani’s Firemaster. It wasn’t like we needed to know much more about them.

I have very few criticisms of my own. The one thing I’d have liked is a bigger buildup to what’s going on, so I can see more ghostbusting. We got Phoebe getting the dragon at the top, just like Afterlife gave us Podcast and Phoebe getting Muncher. I just wanted more, because I like seeing all the ghosts. Mrs. Know-It-All missed the first movie’s montage, and since we’re back in New York, she felt like that should’ve happened again. To be fair, we sort of get it after that first chase, with the news reporter and the old commercials.

Those commercials are nostalgia bait, and I’ve got to admit a lot of this movie is nostalgia bait all day long. The toys, the cereal, the music video. People want to sit here and call that meta. Those four were celebrities in the eighties. That’s what would be on TV.

We both like Walter Peck as mayor, and we both think he was very much underutilized. He felt like he was in it just to be Walter Peck. Another commentator asked how he went from head of the EPA to mayor, and I do understand that. I liked the intent behind it, and I like what happens with him toward the end.

The story beat that bothered Mrs. Know-It-All was Phoebe. She’s the smartest one out of all of them, and they dismiss her constantly. It was an actual turnoff for her. She looked at me in the theater and said she couldn’t deal with them treating her like this. I believe that’s the response you’re supposed to have to those moments. But she started noticing it everywhere after that. Trevor comes down to say there’s something in the attic (which turns out to be Slimer, which was so cool), and Callie tells him he’s an adult, go deal with it. That rubbed her the wrong way. My read is that something creepy in the attic has become normal for these people.

She also thought the callback to the little Stay Puft guys was a bit of oh, this again. That gag was a little weird.

Where This Goes Next

I feel like this is two out of three. They started Ghost Corps as a production company exclusively to develop Ghostbusters properties, and I can see this going on. You do one more movie and finish this chapter. Then maybe you shift to a prestige series somewhere, with Winston in a cameo doing what they always talked about, starting a franchise. Ghostbusters in Philadelphia. Miami. L.A. The animated series already showed us there’s room for other kinds of stories.

There’s a mid-credits scene right after the title credits, and it’s literally the little Stay Puft guys stealing a Stay Puft marshmallow truck. I don’t think it lays groundwork for a sequel. It’s a fun button that shows they’re out in the world.

A little theory crafting. At the very end, Peck wants to shut them down, and then the people of New York are cheering because the Ghostbusters saved the city, and all he can say is yeah, totally. We talked about this when the trailer came out. I think they should absolutely revisit the storyline from the comics where Peck has no choice. I would love it if he made them a municipal service, like the ambulance, like the police. That way they’d have to answer to him.

The Verdict

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire lands at an 8.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

Mrs. Know-It-All went first and gave it an 8 out of 10. She’ll watch it again. It wasn’t as wonderful as Afterlife for her, but she’d gone a long time without a Ghostbusters movie when that one showed up. Mine is a tiny bit better than hers.

Is this the kind of movie that’s going to win awards? Probably not. Spring break is literally around the corner, and this is a good warm-up to summer. I don’t think it’s going to do gangbusters at the box office, but I think it’ll do well enough, and you have to remember that no Ghostbusters movie other than maybe the first has ever done astronomical numbers. It’s a solid entry in the franchise. They’ve really built something nice, and I enjoyed the heck out of it.

If you’ve already gone out and seen it, tell me what you thought, and tell me which collectible you got. AMC had the trap, and I know some of the other theaters had Slimer buckets where you pull the popcorn right out of his face. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.