Weekend Watch - Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

                Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating, review, and recommendation. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers, is the latest of the rebooted Ghostbusters films, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. The film is the follow-up to 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife and sees the return of many characters from that film and from the originals, including Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, McKenna Grace, Celeste O’Connor, and Logan Kim reprising their roles from Afterlife, with Dan Aykroyd’s Ray Stantz taking a more prominent role this time around, and the additions of Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, and Emily Alyn Lind to fill out the main cast. This one is directed by Afterlife writer Gil Kenan who is again joined in the writing room by Afterlife director, and son of the original Ghostbusters director, Jason Reitman. The film opened in theaters this weekend. Let’s get into it.

Letter Grade: C-, a weak third act and overstuffed first bring down what is otherwise a fun and well-crafted movie sequel.

Should you Watch This Film? Maybe, it’ll probably please fans of the first reboot film, and doesn’t really have anything that’ll upset die-hard classic fans too much either. If you aren’t about that Ghostbusters life, though, I doubt this film will win you over.

Why?

                After taking a break from its usual haunt of the Big Apple in Afterlife, the Ghostbusters saga returns to NYC and the old red brick firehouse in Frozen Empire. An abundance of practical and digital effects return New York to its old, haunted self, in need of rescuing by a new generation of Ghostbusters. The characters, old and new, bring plenty of heart, if not necessarily humor, to this latest iteration of the films, which continues in the vein of its predecessor with McKenna Grace’s Phoebe Spengler taking center stage in the film’s narrative, again a solid choice, though weakened a bit by her continued fourth-place billing in the credits and attempts to create stories for the abundance of other characters filling out the film. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a film that fits the visual feel and overall vibe of the franchise with fun characters and cool, nerdy technology and ghost stuff, but it trips itself up by getting too convoluted for its fairly breezy hour-and-fifty-five-minute runtime.

                One thing you can certainly say in Frozen Empire’s favor, which goes a long way toward how much I liked this film, is that it maintains that same sense of practicality in all of its props, sets, and visuals that made the originals and Afterlife such successes. Obviously, not everything is practical, nor was it in the original, but their practical and digital effects alike remain very on-brand for the franchise. Slimer still looks like a weird puppet; there’s a lot of new ghosts that use that blend of practical and digital to great effect – some terrifying and others goofy or endearing; there’s a fantastic scene in the third act with one of the proton packs sparking up in the back that’s probably a simple effect, but it achieves this cool factor that gets you excited for what’s about to happen even if the story getting you there hasn’t. You can tell that Kenan and Reitman both care a lot for the franchise and that everyone who worked on the film wants to stay true to the originals.

                Unfortunately, love for the old films and past iterations keeps Frozen Empire’s story mired in an excessively long first act that’s mostly just exposition and setup interspersed with nostalgia grabs and reveals of new gadgets and/or ghosts. It’s a textbook first act, except for the fact that it takes up almost the entire first hour of the film. This leads into a fun second act, though, that jumps between storylines fairly fluidly and keeps you engaged with payoffs from the setups in the first act. The pace picks up and you start to remember why you like these films in the first place. However, by the time we get to the film’s final act, there’s only about twenty minutes of the film left, and we get a regrettably rushed climax that misses out on much of its tension and emotional weight by rushing things that could otherwise have had extended scenes devoted to them had it not taken half the film to get everything rolling. Couple that with an astounding amount of shoehorned nostalgia for the sake of trailer spots, and you’re left with a conclusion that feels just a little too empty to justify the amount of time spent setting it up.

                For whatever reason, they were trying to do too much. Much as I enjoyed the comedy of Kumail Nanjiani’s character, his inclusion and arc felt out of place and rushed alongside the rest of the film. It detracted some from both the screentime and character development of Phoebe, which in turn detracted from the overall impact of the film, since she’s the main character. On the other hand, relegating Finn Wolfhard’s Trevor to the role of comic relief might have been the best call they could have made – his arc in Afterlife wasn’t overly engaging, and he is absolutely the funniest part of this film, which gets me excited to see him do something more in that vein as his career develops. Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd get to fully step into the parenting roles (which Coon had in the first film as well), creating some odd tensions at certain points in the first half but paying off with some of Paul Rudd’s best scenes in the back half, so I’m mixed on that choice. Aykroyd getting some additional screentime probably shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, and don’t get me wrong, it’s no Blues Brothers or even O.G. Ghostbusters, but he makes for a passable secondary protagonist as Ray seeks purpose in his later years. Again, though, all of these extra plots and conflicts make that first act drag, when really all the film needed to work was the Spenglers (Grace, Wolfhard, and Coon) working with Gary as Ghostbusters for Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore, focusing on Phoebe’s relationship with Ghostbusting and her family, and it could have been a complete film. Everything else is fluff that drags this film’s potential down.

                All told, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a decent sequel that stays true to the formula and atmosphere of the original films that unfortunately gets bogged down in nostalgia and excessive storylines, limiting its overall impact. It definitely could have been better, but thanks to the care put into the details by the filmmakers and the actors, it manages to stay out of the abysmal territory of most of the films from the first quarter of the year so far. See it in theaters if you want, or don’t. I don’t have overly strong feelings on this one either way.

Weekend Watch - Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

                Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating, review, and recommendation. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers, is Marvel’s latest film, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. The film is the launch of Marvel’s Phase Five, introducing the new big-bad of the universe, Kang, to theatrical audiences after he received a soft-launch in the Loki series back in 2021. The film sees the return of Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang/Ant-Man alongside Evangeline Lilly’s Hope Van Dyne/Wasp, Michael Douglas’s Hank Pym, and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Janet Van Dyne. In addition to Jonathan Majors’s Kang the Conqueror, the film also introduces Kathryn Newton as the new actress for the now-teenage Cassie Lang and features cameos from Bill Murray, William Jackson Harper, and Corey Stoll. Let’s get into it.

Letter Grade: B; there’s no denying that the film has issues, but there’s a lot to enjoy here that makes it better than the current critic consensus.

Should you Watch This Film? If you enjoy the MCU or comic book films, this is a great watch for you. If you don’t like that type of film, there’s not enough here that will change your mind.

Why?

                Marvel’s introduction to Phase Five gives audiences a clear vision for the future of the franchise in the midst of a muddled story in the present, fitting for a film set predominantly in a region that exists outside of time and space. The film is unquestionably high on its new characters (the future of the franchise) with an excellent villain performance from Majors and one of the better “teen” outings in the franchise from Newton. Unfortunately, their performances and the rightly directed focus on Pfeiffer’s Janet can’t save the film entirely from the odd shift in direction for the Ant-Man films and a story shot full of holes.

                In terms of performances, Quantumania benefits from some of the best in recent MCU history with actors fully committed to their characters, even if their writing and story are imperfect. Rudd has truly come into his own as Lang and Ant-Man, making the character in his own image as a recognizably lovable celebrity who also happens to have saved the world a few years ago. He brings the same lightness to this film that we have become used to but also manages to rise to the physicality that this story requires with believable results. Michael Douglas is tasked with the role of comedic side character typically filled by Michael Peña in these films and actually does an admirable job. Is it as iconic or likeable as Peña’s Luis? Absolutely not, but Douglas manages to turn his supergenius into enough of a relief to keep the film moving. In my opinion, “the Wasp” referred to in this film’s title has to be Michelle Pfeiffer’s Janet Van Dyne because she has so much more to do than Evangeline Lilly in this film and carries that burden well. Having played a fairly minimal role in the last Ant-Man film, Pfeiffer comes to the front as the expert on the Quantum Realm and Kang, giving plenty of backstory and explanation even as she struggles to cope with the consequences of her past mistakes. It’s easy to see that she enjoys the role and is fully capable of carrying the yoke of secondary protagonist. Kathryn Newton takes her role as Cassie Lang head-on, again managing to turn the loss of a fan-favorite character into a net neutral (and perhaps even gain in this case) as she serves as the heroes’ moral compass for most of the film, reminding Scott of what heroes are supposed to do at every turn. Finally, Jonathan Majors goes to work as the new Big-Bad of the saga – Kang the Conqueror. He plays the character as this malevolent force, offering to save the multiverse no matter how many people and universes he has to destroy in the process. His writing is perhaps the strongest, and Majors takes advantage, delivering line after line of despotic dialogue with weight and excellence.

                All the strong performances can’t do enough to salvage Quantumania’s overly expository and underwhelming Star Wars-lite story. From the first scene in the Quantum Realm, the inspiration from Disney’s other major franchise becomes clear, complete with desert scavengers, a cantina, and an evil empire fighting against rebels. From there, the story takes too long to get where it wants to go (introducing Kang) in order to get a frankly underwhelming Bill Murray cameo into the start of the second act. Unfortunately, for all of Majors’s greatness as Kang, the film’s third act does him pretty dang dirty – having him lose in fairly embarrassing fashion multiple times. His performance does enough to keep me excited for his future in the MCU, but the contrivance for the heroes to win in this film makes me wary of future underutilization of the villain’s genius, charisma, and physicality. We’ll see.

                Great performances from most of its leads don’t fully salvage Quantumania’s mess of a script, resulting in a mixed bag in Marvel’s first Phase Five film. Its visuals and charismatic leads help keep it enjoyable enough to warrant watching in theaters, and I think it probably would be pretty solid in 3D if you want to pay extra for that. As it stands, it’s not the best that Marvel has ever put out. It’s not the worst, either, and I think that with Bob Iger back at Disney, they’ll be able to return their focus to producing quality over quantity again.