Brief Story Line
Two years after the events of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Ant-man and the Wasp etc), Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon - The Gilded Age TV series, Gone Girl etc) and her children Trevor (Finn Wolfhard - It, Carmen Sandiego TV series etc) & Phoebe (McKenna Grace - Crater, The Bad Seed etc) had moved to New York and lived in the previous location the original Ghostbusters stayed in. They continued working on catching ghosts in the city, though their activities would have adverse impact and were disapproved by the Mayor, Walter Peck (William Atherton - Die Hard, Die Hard 2 etc).
When Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani - Migration, Doolittle etc) tried to sold an orb he found in his grandmother's home to Dr. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd - Trading Places, Driving Miss Daisy etc), it was found out later that the orb contained powerful supernatural being that could endanger the world. So with the support of Ray, Peter (Bill Murray - Lost in Translation, Groundhog Day etc), Winston (Ernie Hudson - Quantum Leap 2022 TV series, Miss Congeniality etc), Janine (Annie Potts - Toy Story 4, Pretty In Pink etc), the new Ghostbusters had to find the way to save the world from the very powerful ancient being.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well after seeing this movie, I was quite happy that it still retained the humor that was pretty strong in the first film. And the comedy was felt even stronger with the addition Kumail Nanjiani who could make us laugh out loud. Some of the audience who I think were fans of the 80s movies seemed to enjoy themselves as well, especially with the appearance of cast of the original movies (which even included Janine and the annoying mayor). But the younger audience were just laughing due to Nanjiani's behaviors. Oh yeah, just like its predecessor, the movie was classified for all ages in Indonesia and this time I thought it was more suitable cause aside from one very brief jump scare scene in the middle, there was no truly horrifying images throughout.
The movie started well enough with some ghost bustings which immediately brought nostalgic feeling to me and my wife. It was nice to see they combined with newer technology too. However, subsequent to that, the film did feel a bit more drama comedy with a lot of dialogues and less action. Fortunately the characters were engaging enough that we could still enjoy the non action part. The movie did end with an exciting final fight which was quite entertaining with the nice cooperation between the new and old Ghostbusters.
The cast of the movie was pretty large as aside from those names I mentioned above, there were other support cast like Celeste O'Connor (Madame Web, Selah and the Spades etc) and Logan Kim who reprised their roles as Lucky and Podcast respectively. The film also had few additional cast such as Patton Oswald (The Sandman TV series, Ratatouille etc) as Dr. Hubert, James Acaster (Cinderella 2021 live action etc) as Dr. Lars Pinfield and Emily Alyn Lind (Doctor Sleep, The Babysitter etc) as Melody. Obviously with such large ensemble cast, it would be challenging to give balanced screen time for all. This time I felt McKenna Grace was given larger portion than the rest, probably because her performance in the first film was highly praised.
As a movie categorized under supernatural comedy genre, I thought this was exciting enough. But if I had to compare my experience with the 2021 film, I personally felt that one to be better in term of story and it also had that beautiful scene towards the end which left better impression. In here the comedy felt stronger and the very large ensemble cast made it feel like the people involved were too many. And finally, the strongest enemy did not seem to be as powerful as the first movie (felt a bit easy to defeat to my personal opinion).
Overall I was still entertained with the film. The ghost busting was fun, the ghosts were not that many but they did show the ones who we knew well from the original films (you would know who they were if you had seen them before). There was a mid end credit scene which said to be hint for the next sequel. Let's see if this is commercially successful enough to convince the producers to make the third and complete the trilogy. Btw, the movie was directed by Gil Kenan (A Boy Called Christmas, Monster House etc) and written by him together with Jason Reitman who stepped down from director's position. So if you are fans of Ghostbusters like me and my wife, then you would have fun seeing this one, especially with so many things that would give you the pleasure of good old days, including listening to the movie's theme song.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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