Having passed through the original Ghostbusters craze phase unscathed and unenlightened, I came to the fractured franchise late and never quite got its blend of winking gross-out humor and imaginative but tame scares. There was always something under-cooked about its premise of a professional squad of ectoplasm exterminators, as if all the ideas had been worked out in the kitchen. That’s why the characters themselves are so important to the series, and why the original crew still needs to show up, however peripherally, in the new incarnation—or, at least, until the characters in the new incarnation make as much of an impression. Paul Rudd, who plays Gary, the nominally male head of this new enterprise, which has moved from the Midwest to the old fire station in New York that housed the original Ghostbusters, has imprinted his patented awkward nice guy on too many decent comedies to make the proper impression here (most people who are into this kind of movie will likely look at him and think of Ant-man first), and the three actual blood family members of the crew, mom Callie (Carrie Coon), daughter Phoebe (McKenna Grace), and son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), weren’t given enough distinctive dimensionality in Ghostbusters: Afterlife to carry over to the new movie. I feel I have to get to know them all over again.

The silver lining is that Phoebe gets to reboot her emotional affiliation with the audience by shouldering the one dramatic subplot of the movie. After a job in a sewer goes wrong, she strikes up a friendship with a ghost named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind), whose provenance is never completely clear, but the two bond over conversations about death and family that are surprisingly affecting. Whatever the purpose of this diversion, director Gil Kenan has other entertainment obligations to carry out, and the volume of plot elements he has to juggle overwhelms him in the end. The real “story,” as it were, starts when a slick scam artist (Kumail Nanjiani) tries to sell a family heirloom to original GBer Ray (Dan Aykroyd). It happens to contain an imprisoned ghost that is out for big time revenge in the form of icing over New York City (which, typically, takes the wintery attack in stride). The related action is sufficiently potent but keeps getting interrupted by business that stalls whatever momentum Kenan can muster. Major chunks of expostion are given over to another original GBer, Winston (Ernie Hudson), and the paranormal research center he has built in an abandoned aquarium; as well as Gary’s fanboy obsession with the original Ghostbustermobile, which is presented as a series of flat running jokes. Phoebe’s story doesn’t stand a chance.

So when Bill Murray shows up for his requisite nostalgia appearance in the loud climax, you can practically smell the calculation. Murray has always been good at counteracting his don’t-give-a-shit attitude with crack comic timing that saves even the lamest jokes from themselves, but here he just feels obligatory, especially when he gets frozen in place with nothing much to do. Now how much did he get paid for that?

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire home page in Japanese