Ghostbusters V: Frozen Empire (2024)

Plot of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. The new ghostbusters team of the Spengler family plus their former science teacher Mr Grooberson have moved back into New York and have taken over the famous fire station. There are problems, the mayor is threatening to shut them down, so they sack 15 year old Phoebe, who nis actually the ace of the team. She sulks at a park chess table and finds herself playing against the ghost of a young woman, Melody, and over time they become friends. Meanwhile Ray buys an ancient ball thing from a middle eastern man, Nadeem. The ball contains an ancient god, Garraka, who Melody manages to trick Phoebe into releasing and it is Garraka’s ambition to freeze the world. Nadeen becomes, unbeknown to himself the Firemaster, last of a line of Firemasters who have kept Garraka safe from the world but can he and the combined efforts of the Ghostbusters, old and new, put the evil god back in his box?

Content: No sex or nudity, or drugs or drinking. The film opens in 1910 when the fire brigade is called to a meeting in a large public building to find everybody frozen. There-after the Spenglers make their home in the fire house, fiinding a ghopst in the attic and chasing one along the street in the ambulance, grabbing it with a back pack. This followed by a row with the mayor who wants to shut them down. Phoebe interacts with Melody and is able temporarily to become a ghost, though this allows Garraka to escape. Lighthearted interaction between Nadeem and the team, particularly Ray and later the surviving members of the original ghostbusters get involved, also with more young people from ‘Afterlife’.

A View: This outing was generally thought to have been better than the previous film and with a box office of $202 million it might have made some money.  It was quite fun although as a fairly aged viewer I find the almost lesbian relationships between young women, in this case the ghost, Melody, and the human, Phoebe, pretty tiresome. Although I have to admit that when girls are paired with young men, the young men are almost always complete dorks, so I suppose we’ve just got to take what we can get. In this case quite worthwhile family viewing, but don’t forget young chlidren may be afraid of ghosts.

Fun Fact: Jake Wilson of The Age wrote, ‘At this point Aykroyd has shed any pretense of ironic distance, emerging as the mournful weirdo he surely always was’.