“Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” is a creaky, cutesie and cluttered sequel to the dark and pseudo-serious reboot of this goofy, action comedy franchise of the 1980s, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife.”

Ungainly, so over-populated with survivors of those Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson pictures, and their far less interesting younger counterparts, the film is analogous of that infamous Stay Puft marshmallow man of the original film, “Ghostbusters. ”  “Frozen Empire” can’t get out of its own bloated way.

It’s so committed to “fan service” that any doubt that was ever a euphemism for “pandering to the people still into this junk” vanishes.

Newcomer Kumail Nanjiani, as a sketchy goof selling off his granny’s antiques who sets off the movie’s icy armageddon, pretty much steals the picture by default. Everybody else, old and new, has to content her or himself with almost triggering a case of the “warm fuzzies.” Almost.

That pretty much goes for the entire film here. “Almost.”

The Stengler family — Mom Callie (Carrie Coon), the daughter of the late Egon (Ramis), her science-smart teen daughter Phoebe (McKenna Grace) and older son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Callie’s new man, former science teacher Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) have been living in the old Ghostbuster firehouse, cleaning spectral nuisances out of New York and making a hash of the city as they careen about in the Ectomobile ghost busting ambulance.

The mayor (William Atherton, amusingly vile as ever) isn’t pleased. “Retired” buster Ray (Aykroyd) is more interested in his other-worldly video channel, produced by protege Podcast (Logan Kim). And rich ex-buster Winston (Ernie Hudson) is financing possible upgrades to the operation and the industry via his in-house Brit wizard (James McAster) and Trevor’s crush, Lucky (Celeste O’Connor).

Then the low-rent hustler Nadeem (Nanjiani of “The Big Sick”) lets this bronze orb fall into the wrong hands — OK, he sells it to Ray. And almost everybody else is involved in unleashing the frigid ancient Beast Within — and ice and newly-found or newly released/already-captured ghosts threaten to tear a rift between “here” and what lies beyond.

“The end of the world as we know it” won’t just be a golden oldie.

Phoebe’s encounter with a cute chess-playing ghost girl (Emily Alyn Lind) who must be from the ’80s, based on her hair, attire and vocabulary (seemingly intended to be MUCH older), has Phoebe questioning her connection to the afterlife, and attraction to women.

So, being bi-curious almost kills the cat. And every body else.

Nanjiani is funny in most every scene, which makes the return of prodigal buster Venkman (Murray) almost painful to sit through. His character’s running the same academic “research” hustle he always did, still reaching for the same pithy punchline he delivered, on or off script, 40 years ago. And it’s not working.

Director and co-writer Gil Kenan, whose breakthrough was directing the animated “Monster House” and who co-wrote “Afterlife,” is at a loss with what to do with Murray and Annie Potts from the earlier franchise. He gives them and Hudson and Akyroyd scenes and closeups which only exist because he and co-writer Jason Reitman figure the fans would have wanted them.

Coon soldiers through this, the one serious player allowed not to land a laugh. But here’s comic Patton Oswalt and the normally-reliable Rudd seeking that same excuse, “allowed not to land a laugh.” Because they pretty much don’t.

The ghost gimmicks, sight-gags and settings — the New York Public Library — as well as the non-supernatural villain (Atherton) are, like Murray’s attempts at his jokey old self, simply recycled from the original films.

Even that orb’s nicknames, “Ball of Hate” and “The Devil’s Testicle,” feel like throw-away jokes because nobody on set came up with a better line.

The plot gets bogged down in old tech and new, exposition and more pages and pages of Akryoyd and his disciples riffing on the “science” of the “world beyond” our own, gobbledygook which no longer falls trippingly off the tongue.

And it’s hard to say relative newcomers Grace, Wolfhard, O’Connor, Kim and McAster come into their own, because their struggle to be noticed over the sentimentalility still ladled on in the second film, if not quite as heavily as in the first, doesn’t let them register. Not much, anyway.

Phoebe’s efforts — at 15 — to be accepted by authorities, the world and her family for who she is — “I’m a ghostbuster. I save the world!” — isn’t so much lost in the tsunami of not-quite-silliness as noted and shrugged off.

So there it is, a “Ghostbusters” that’s a ghost bust. “Impossible,” you say?

“Son, I stopped believing in that word a long time ago.” And never did figure out a funnier comeback for it.

Rating: PG-13 for supernatural action/violence, profanity, innuendo.

Cast: Paul Rudd, McKenna Grace, Kumail Nanjiani, Dan Aykroyd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, Celeste O’Connor, Patton Oswalt, Emily Alyn Lind, Logan Kim, James McAster, Annie Potts and William Atherton

Credits: Directed by Gil Kenan, scripted by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman, based on the screenplay to “Ghostbusters.” A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:55