[Watch our review above or read it below.]

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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire simply cannot find a way to smoothly thread together many characters, half-baked plot strands, and a huge, huge reliance on nostalgia.

The film’s first quarter works well enough, there’s a sense of fun and that Ghostbusters tone is on point, but things start falling apart – pretty quickly.

A classic first quarter narrative set-up… dragged out for three quarters of a movie. We’re thrown into a bombardment of laborious, repetitive exposition, lazy one-liners, and a line-up of characters that often struggle to feel narratively relevant. I did actually find Kumail Nanjiani amusing though.

By the time the final act showdown finally arrives (awkwardly taking place in one small, overly crowded location) and the city-wide cataclysm that the marketing has been banking on finally unfolds, you’ll be left feeling pretty ripped off.

The fan service is mishandled, shoehorned nods with little reason apart from nostalgia. And we had a nice reunion of the original surviving Ghostbusters in Ghostbusters: Afterlife; we didn’t need this half-assed attempt at a reunion here.

Too dull, too poorly structured, too long.