Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
This improved on Afterlife by not recycling the plot of one of the previous movies verbatim. I don't know if I would say it's a better movie overall though. The Ghostbusters formula is usually supernatural action-comedy, but this one only manages the supernatural part. On the action front, there's one arbitrary ghostbusting scene at the start and the whole cast stand around waving their proton streams in the last few minutes, but I don't recall there being any action inbetween. That wouldn't be too bad if it it managed to be funny, but it's not.
Phoebe is played much straighter than in Afterlife while Podcast barely appears. They were the best characters in Afterlife, and this movie suffers by not letting them be more entertaining. Paul Rudd has an okay arc as he struggles to adjust to being a stepfather, but it's nothing special. Phoebe's mother flat-out sucks. Ray is dour and burnt out. Venkman has one funny moment, but isn't around much. Meanwhile, great comedians like James Acaster and Patton Oswalt are added the cast while being given no funny material to work with, like they were instructed not to upstage the more established cast members. Kumail Nanjiani ends up being the one bright spot in story, since he's given a character with an actual personality.
The main problem with Frozen Empire is the overstuffed cast. You have almost all the surviving cast members from the 1984 original, the whole cast from Afterlife, and a bunch of new characters. They're constantly stepping on each other's toes as they fight for their moment in the spotlight. That's no doubt why the movie takes forever to get going. The only threat for the middle 80% is an ominous orb that vibrates occasionally.
Unlike Afterlife, this is a movie I might--might--want to watch again at some point, but Ghostbusters 2016 keeps looking better and better in comparison to these later sequels.
