Now I gave Afterlife both an easy road and a hard road, an easy road in the sense that I gave the film more credit that it deserved because it was a better version of the legacy sequels, however a hard road due to it arriving as the absolute final straw of that glut of emotionally manipulative soft reboot films. So heading into Frozen Empire it was another typical ‘benefit of thee doubt’ situation, based largely upon the fact that I thought that the trailer for the film actually looked pretty good and now that all of the typical soft rebooting looked to be done with, we could get on with a new and exciting entry that would hopefully attempt something original. With regret, that was not the case and although the drunk man who was screaming loudly at every trailer before my screening was sent out of the cinema, in a sense I wish he would have stayed to offer some entertainment to the proceedings.
If
Frozen Empire has one cardinal sin it is that for a film about ghosts
and creatures from another dimension attacking New York, it is criminally
boring with a supreme issue of pace, despite being less than 2hrs, which in
this era of major movie studio films of this nature is a blessing it feels so
much longer. Jason Reitman does not continue to direct this film, instead
passing the reigns to Gil Kenan, with the two of them on writing duty aswell.
Now the trailers alone can show anybody noticing that this was a major reshoot
situation, but it’s not that that shows in this films messiness or looseness,
more so in its major overpacked quality. This film floods itself with so many
plot lines and characters that the filmmakers lose grasp rather swiftly on any
manner of cohesion or rhythmic pacing, instead we simply plod from one average
sequence to another with the rare glimpse of interesting comedy thrown in here
and there almost as a pittance. Or rather a tease of something that we have one
since lost in this franchise, or did we ever have it in the franchise at all -
or is this the ultimate case of ‘one good movie and thats it’ we have ever had.
It’s not that Frozen Empire doesn’t have its moments, everybody involved
is an inherently charismatic and likeable performer so the majority of the
comedy bits do land to some extent, but very few go beyond a mild smirk and
only very few actually garnered a laugh from me. Bill Murray and Kamil Nanjiani
being the lucky ones to receive this commendation. But so many action set
pieces come and go without effect and so many emotional beats don’t land in
anyway shape or form. McKenna Grace continues to do great work but is hamfisted
by a bizarre ghost story that feels like its leaning into a lesbian coming of
age romance largely due to Graces real age, only for her to still be playing
someone far younger. It’s a bizarre area of the script that doesn’t land at
all. Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard and Paul Rudd continue the family dynamic from
the last film and it’s successful as it was before, in a middling sense. Dan Akroyd
can be genuinely commended for having an absolute devotion and seriousness to
all of his scenes and I mean that, no matter what absolute junk he is given in
the script to spout, he does it with panache and believability. The problem
largely is that it is a film that does take itself overall as seriously as the
character of Ray Stanz, which makes everybody for the most part a Stanz,
whereas the whole point of the humour and drive of the first film is that Ray
is Ray and Spengler is Spengler and onward and onward. Perhaps the most
illuminating factor is that those initial characters remain so indelible and
memorable and individual whereas each person in this reboot is simply a clone
of a clone of a clone. The copies of one another have finally completely
dwindled.
-
A dull 4/10
that although has a few shining moments where the promise of this recent reboot
shines through, this is a film that despite launching whole new characters,
continuing with the new family and bringing back old members, and on top of
that launching whole new ideas of mythologies and world building… still somehow
feels like a retread without any of the humour or entertainment value of even
the previous entry. This film is seriously over cramped with plot lines and
characters and yet feels terribly dull and aimless. Gil Kenan does what could
be referred to as a valiant effort to create something new, but this effort
fails and is for the most part once again hampered by the plague of the past.
P.S.
It takes an awful lot to have me feel almost nothing when the original song
begins to blast, but it almost feel half hearted in its placement here. Just no
real kick behind it and a real going through the motions sense behind it all.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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