“I’ve got a ghost to bust!”

Justin’s rating: A half-filled bag of Stay Puft marshmallows past its expiration date

Justin’s review: When there’s something strange in the sequel-hood, who you gonna call? The Rehashers! When there’s something weird, and it don’t look good, what you gonna think? Try again later!

Walking out of the theater after seeing Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this is Disney’s Star Wars all over again. Ghostbusters: Afterlife was The Force Awakens: A legacy sequel with one foot in the old, one in the new, a generally fun spirit that was respectful of the franchise’s roots, and a desire to quietly rehash the first movie in a somewhat new setting. We’ve learned that audiences give a pass to this approach — a one-movie truce where we’ll gladly entertain the passing-the-torch antics before the next true chapter may emerge.

But then we got Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which stumbles in some of the same ways as The Last Jedi. It can’t quite let the legacy characters go but doesn’t know what to do with them any longer. It can’t commit in either a new or old direction and keeps on straddling a fence of uncertainty. And it becomes too bloated in an effort to play it safe rather than being trim, daring, and fresh.

“Bloated” isn’t a term I wanted to slap onto Frozen Empire, but I’m going to have to (and I’m quite the Ghostbusters fan, I should add).

For starters, there are way, way, way too many characters — including new ones — that keep anyone from really developing and having an arc. I’d say the strongest presences are Ray (Dan Aykroyd), Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), and Gary (Paul Rudd), and after that it’s a sharp drop-off in relevance and purpose. You’ve got three other legacy Ghostbusters not doing that much (Bill Murray, Annie Potts, and Ernie Hudson), the mom (Carrie Coon) who has nothing to work with here, three kids from the previous movie who are extremely superfluous, Patton Oswalt as yet another supernatural geek, some science researcher Ghostbuster, Walter Peck (William Atherton) being super-old and inexplicably the mayor, and Kumail Nanjiani as the leading contender of Actors I’ve Wanted To Immediately Slap Into Unconsciousness Because Egads You’re Annoying.

That’s too much. That’s so much. And who are the Ghostbusters here? All of them. Some of them. It doesn’t matter. It’s whoever throws on an outfit and finds something to shoot, I suppose.

The bloated feeling continues into the story, which kind of takes its sweet time getting here. At least we’re back in New York City with the Hook and Ladder building and all that, but nothing’s really clicking the way it should. The Spengler family are going through the motions of ghostbusting, but it’s not that thrilling, nor does it convince you that any of these people care to be doing this job, especially since it doesn’t seem to be paying anything.

And can I presume upon your patience to harp on the bloated nature of the fanservice present? Oh yay it’s Slimer. And the library ghost. And the lil’ Stay Puft marshmallow dudes. And the lions from the library. And actual clips from the first two movies. I am so dang tired of poorly done fanservice in these sequels, and I could write an essay using just this film as an example. Listen, Hollywood screenwriters, you can’t move forward if your head if continually craned backward. Let the old go and bring something new to the table, OK?

Phoebe gets a turn being Harry Potter in Order of the Phoenix as she’s benched from ghostbusting and gets grumpy about it. Winston has set up a new Ghostbuster lab and containment unit to take over for the failing Hook and Ladder one set up in 1984. The one teen meets Slimer a couple times. Ray investigates a strange orb that holds the potential destruction of the world. That annoying dude finds out that he’s apparently descended from an ancient order of ghostbusters [pause while I softly slam my head against the wall a few times in a soothing manner]. An ice-fear ghost emerges and douses the whole city in a new ice age but Elsa doesn’t do a single thing about it. A “Possessor” ghost gets loose and causes havoc.

The only really interesting story beat was Phoebe making friends with a ghost named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind). I was hoping that the Ghostbusters might end up partnering with a ghost going forward as a cool twist, but this whole plot ends up fizzling out in a very predictable fashion.

With all they stuff into this film, something had to be excluded. Apparently a lot of somethings, if the difference between the trailers/preview screenshots and the final film is to be believed. Keenly felt is the absence of actual comedy. The first two Ghostbuster flicks were supernatural comedies with lots of very funny moments and quotes, and even Afterlife managed to balance humor and drama well. But here it’s all drama and X-Files-lite investigations. I think there were just two small parts that made me give a soft “hah,” but that was it. Phoebe mopes her way through this, so she’s not the stealth quipper like the previous movie, and Bill Murray was clearly collecting a paycheck for two days of low-effort acting. I guess that leaves Paul Rudd? He’s OK here, but he’s not flinging out any laughs either.

The other factor I missed was the sheer energy that this franchise once displayed. The soundtrack is dull and contains leftover cues from the first film, but don’t expect a peppy ghostbusting montage set to a Run DMC song here. None — seriously, not a one — of the action scenes felt viscerally thrilling. There weren’t even any great new gadgets, aside from the ECTO-C, Ray’s motorcycle with a side car.

I have to say that the lack of an experienced editor’s hand shows in several continuity errors. Phoebe blows up one of the NYC library’s lions… only to have it reappear like nothing happened a few scenes later. Phoebe takes a hacksaw to the firehouse sliding pole… only to have a character slide down a perfectly undamaged pole two scenes later. Stuff like that.

Yet it wasn’t an awful film, simply… underwhelming. I’m never going to complain about getting new Ghostbusters movies, and here and there were parts that I sincerely liked. I appreciated the return to NYC, the wider array of interesting ghost types, and the build up to the big boss ghost being unleashed. Everything to do with the foreshadowing and the orb frost effects feels quite ominous, especially as the Ghostbuster containment unit takes hit after hit until it fails. I mean, at least we didn’t get yet another reprise of Gozer, which might’ve been my biggest quibble with Afterlife.

Sony knew that this wasn’t going to amount to much, which is why it dumped this movie in early March 2014 instead of a summer or Halloween season. As much as I like Phoebe as a character, I don’t want to see the studio push forward with another sequel in this vein, nor a full disastrous reboot. Listen, if the cartoon series and comic books could give a lot of expanded depth and story ideas to this universe, then it’s not impossible to crack the formula to a genuinely great modern Ghostbuster entry. But it’s not going to be down this road under this management.