It might be worse. Under Gil Kenan’s workmanlike route — the screenplay is by him and Jason Reitman, son of the primary movie’s director, Ivan Reitman, who died in 2022 and to whom “Frozen Empire” is devoted — the household from “Afterlife” is reassembled in New York City, within the refurbished firehouse the place it began. Mom Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon), her sardonic son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard of “Stranger Things”), brainiac daughter Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and mother’s boyfriend Gary (Paul Rudd) are carrying on the ghostbusting mission of Grandpa Egon (the late Harold Ramis), bankrolled by authentic fourth Ghostbuster Winston (Ernie Hudson), now a besuited Manhattan tech entrepreneur.

Where are the opposite two of the well-known crew? Ray (Dan Aykroyd) is working a magical notions store when he’s visited by the shifty Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani), who’s unloading his grandmother’s results, amongst which is a mysterious steel orb glowing with demonic power. Aykroyd appears delighted to be right here, and I suppose we shouldn’t thoughts paying for an ageing comic’s model of Social Security — let’s name it a pop-culture pension. That’s greater than will be stated for Bill Murray as Peter Venkman. Murray reveals up in two scenes, punches the clock, will get his laughs, picks up his examine and goes dwelling.

Which factors at what’s modified in 40 years. Murray carried the unique “Ghostbusters” on the power of his unflappable sarcasm, turning a fairly good special-effects horror comedy right into a traditional of breezy, gritty New York City wit. “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” is much less a horror comedy and extra a fairly profitable pastiche of issues which have labored earlier than, and never essentially on this sequence alone. The icy eldritch god who serves as the primary villain is a rehash of each CGI monster from the final 20 years. The miniature military of Stay-Puft Marshmallow males are this film’s Minions, and, actually, by the interior logic of the Ghostbusters universe, they shouldn’t even be right here. Wasn’t the primary film’s big model a projection of Ray’s creativeness and never an precise spectral embodiment? Or am I taking all of this manner too significantly?

Really, it might be worse, and “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” serves as an efficient, forgettable household evening on the motion pictures or in-flight time waster. Nanjiani will get probably the most reliable laughs as a deadpan goofball with an unsuspected present, and it’s good to see Patton Oswalt as an skilled in historical languages down within the bowels of the New York Public Library, whose well-known lions get a ghostly goosing. Fans of the primary film will probably be pleased to see the return of Annie Potts as mother-hen Janine, William Atherton because the persnickety mayor, and Slimer, the globby inexperienced junk-food junkie who in 1984 was a tip of the ectoplasm to the not too long ago deceased John Belushi.

With the sizable skills of Coon, Rudd and Wolfhard largely wasted on exposition and reactive one-liners, although, what little sincere emotion exists in “Frozen Empire” comes from Grace’s Phoebe, who’s caught in an adolescent funk made worse by town’s sidelining her from ghostbusting for being a minor. In specific, Phoebe’s scenes with a sad-eyed teenage specter named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind) have a tenderness that the actresses and filmmakers perch precisely and intriguingly on the road between friendship and bodily attraction. Maybe the subsequent “Ghostbusters” ought to be a straight-to-streaming younger grownup same-sex rom-com. Who you gonna name? Netflix.

PG-13. At space theaters. Contains supernatural motion/violence, language and suggestive references. 115 minutes.

Ty Burr is the creator of the film suggestion publication Ty Burr’s Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com.