Review: “Ghostbusters: Afterlife’s Sequel. Frozen Empire”★★★
“Ghostbusters: Afterlife ” was directed by Jason Reitman, whose father, Ivan Reitman, directed the first two films in the 1980s and was in line to take over the third. After many years, following many more studio notes, a new director, Paul Feig, was brought in and the third film became a female-led reboot.
Before it was even released, the reboot became the target of trolls and racists, a casualty of the culture wars. But, like the pesky apparitions that haunt this series, profitable franchises (and even barely profitable ones) rarely truly die in Hollywood, and “Ghostbusters” is simply too silly, too smart about the comedy-sci-fi fantasy genre being potentially lucrative to stay buried for too long.
Nearly 40 years after “Ghostbusters” became a huge hit - one that launched a lucrative franchise that spanned film and video games, Sony is proving that the “Ghostbusters” story doesn't have to be a relic of the past.
–“The Ghostbusters: Afterlife” the second-to-last big-screen installment of the sci-fi comedy, grossed $44 million in its domestic box office debut, - a solid start in unpredictable pandemic times.
In scenes in which the director, Gil Keenan, who wrote the script with Jason Reitman, ponders what it would feel like to let the dead dematerialize forever, the film seems to be asking its fans if they are prepared to release Peter Venkman, the parapsychologist played by Bill Murray, from the pursuit of the dead when it is clear that his soul is not.
“The Ghostbusters: Afterlife” featured the estranged daughter of Harold Ramis' Egon Spengler, a single mother named Callie (Carrie Coon) and her teenage children Phoebe (McKenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard). After the death of their paterfamilias, the family fended off his killer, the dusty Sumerian Gozer, with the help of a high school psychics teacher named Gary (Paul Rudd) two young friends, Luck (Celesta O' Connor) and Podcast (Logan Kim) - yes Podcast; and first generation Ghostbusters, Ray Stantz (Dan Akroyd) Winston Zeddmore (Ernie Hudson) Dr. Venkman (Bill Murray) and the sassy secretary, Janine (Annie Potts).
Whatever element of entrepreneurialism there once was in the Ghostbusters franchise has long since been exorcised, but that's okay: Hollywood assumes that audiences no longer want to be surprised, and it's probably right. 2016's all-female “Ghostbusters” wasn't all bad, but it got caught in the crossfire of the culture war, while the 2021 reboot “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” looked like a mash-up of the original 1984 film and the ‘Stranger Things’ TV series, and did well enough to spawn a sequel: ‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.’ The new film is professionally made, well acted, quite entertaining, and possesses no earthly reason to exist other than the care and feeding of intellectual property.
