I don't want to write an essay here in the comments but you really echoed nearly all my thoughts on this movie. Ghostbusters is my favorite movie and I was really hoping this would be better than Afterlife. It should have been considering it came back to NYC and the concept of a frozen Manhattan in summer is really interesting. But the background of the writer and director is more horror (bad horror at that) and I didn't think they even tried to be funny. It was fun seeing the old cast but there's just too many characters. The majority of them are not interesting aside from Phoebe, her mom, Paul Rudd's character. The plot of sidelining Phoebe and her friendship with that girl ghost was a baffling choice to me for the overall plot. The resolution at the end made no sense. And maybe the point I agreed with you the most on is the cops' reaction to the Ecto-1 going by. In Afterlife it's established that the events of the movies are long forgotten, even considered a conspiracy theory. But in this movie without any back story or screen time suddenly the Ghostbusters are back up and running, the city is aware of ghosts and hauntings and seen as routine, and lastly - somehow Walter Peck is the mayor without explanation and honestly just doesn't seem upset enough that the Ghostbusters are back. The whole movie is just going through the motions and I'm sure this will be the last one now. I am assuming that they had to skip a couple of years of story to explain why the kids are all so much older looking now. It just didn't work. Whoops I did write an essay lol. Sorry.

My take Christiangeekcentral. GHOSTBUSTERS (1984) 10/10 , GB 2 (1989) 5/10 , RGB (1986-90) 10/10 , WOKE (2016) zero! , AFTERLIFE (2021) 10/10 ✝, FROZEN EMPIRE (2024) 8/10 . The way I see it is that FROZEN EMPIRE was a nice curtain call.