PHOTO BY JAAP BUITENDIJK / CTMG INC.

If we try to take “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” as its own movie, it’s a mess.

Let’s forget the heavy legacy of the original film, a 40-year-old comedy megahit with immense influence on modern blockbusters. If we set that aside and attempt to simply evaluate “Frozen Empire” as its own film … there’s not much to it. An ancient doodad contains the spirit of an all-powerful, ice-spewing demon; when its unwitting owner (Kumail Nanjiani) tries to pawn it off on retired Ghostbuster Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), a supernatural cataclysm is set in motion.

This story is underwritten, a hopeless series of deus ex machinas; a problem arises, a character spouts ghost jargon to tell us how to solve it. A subplot about teenage legacy Ghostbuster Phoebe Spengler (Mckenna Grace) trying to prove her mettle is meant to add some emotional heft , but is treated as an afterthought; the producers might as well have put a sign reading “feel free to go to the bathroom now” in the background of those scenes.

On its own merits, then, “Frozen Empire” is thin. But we cannot possibly try to evaluate it on those bounds — even though that should be how every sequel and reboot is judged — because this film will not for a moment let us forget how important its progenitor was.

Any available performer, reference or setting from the first film is brought back; the returning Annie Potts is calmly placed in the background of a half-dozen scenes without any justification or business, while afterthought mid-tier “Ghostbusters” villain Walter Peck (William Atherton) is dragged back to no effect. Slimer is back, as are a fleet of tiny Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. We reclaim the old firehouse set and even journey once again to the New York Public Library, where the original film began; Aykroyd takes a moment to make the same shocked face at the same floating ghost he encountered 40 years ago.

The nostalgia is the point, you see — even moreso than in most latter-day retreads. While fellow revivals, such as those in the Top Gun and Scream series, have aimed at least to comment on what has changed in the intervening decades, the newer “Ghostbusters” films prefer to pretend that nothing has — desperate to insist that your memories are intact and waiting just around the corner, unaffected by the years in between (no matter how much the performers have aged).

This film even features a brief glimpse of Ray Parker, Jr., the performer behind the “Ghostbusters” theme tune — never mind that the song presumably is from our reality, not the world of the film. In “Frozen Empire,” there’s no difference between your childhood memories and the films themselves. If that feels like exploitationing your memories, it should.

My Rating: 3/10

“Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” is now playing in theaters.