by Nick Ferro, Contributing Writer
Growing up, Beetlejuice wasn’t just a Halloween staple in my house; it was year-round viewing. I also watched that insane cartoon that ran for three years, I was Beetlejuice for Halloween in the first grade, and I even had the impossible-to-play Nintendo game for the original NES. As I got older, I became acutely more aware of how many jokes I had actually missed as a kid and the movie became instantly more quotable. But as far as fandom goes, that’s pretty much where it ends for me on the Beetlejuice train. It’s a movie that my family and I still watch a couple times a year, and it has one of my favorite Danny Elfman scores. This may sound strange, especially if you know me, but I wasn’t all that excited or full of anticipation for a sequel. Not that I didn’t want one, I just didn’t yearn for one the same way I did for other franchise’s that have recently had long awaited sequels. Part of the reason is due to the unending promise since the mid ‘90s that a sequel was coming. Coupled with the announcement in the late 2000s that Tim Burton was back on board and another decade of teases and rumors, I was at a place where I truly believed a sequel would never actually happen. But that feeling ended about 20 minutes into my viewing of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice this past Wednesday, when I realized it was way too late in the film to pull a prank on the audience.
Set 36 years after the original, directed one again by Burton, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice sees the Deetz family return to their home in Winter River due to a death in the family. Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), who has become a famous television medium, is trapped between trying to reconnect with her estranged daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), put up with her insane stepmother, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), and manage her over the top boyfriend and manager, Rory (Justin Theroux). Meanwhile, in the Neitherworld (not sure if that name actually stuck around from the cartoon, but that’s what I’ve always called it, so that’s how I will refer to it) Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) is running his reverse-exorcism business when he learns that his soul-sucking ex-wife, Delores (Monica Bellucci), is back and out for… umm, revenge? To kill him? You know, I’m not actually sure what her endgame is, because in reality, neither is the movie. But she’s back and she’s pissed!
One new addition to the cast is Willem Dafoe as Neitherworld detective Wolf Jackson, who is very silly throughout, because he isn’t really a detective; he’s a dead actor playing a detective. Which, I have to be honest, I found to be a delightfully hilarious concept. I feel pretty confident that Wolf, being an actor playing the role of detective in the afterlife is playing on the original movie’s notion that all those who work as civil servants in the Neitherworld are people who committed suicide. Furthering that idea to all law enforcement in the Neitherworld are dead former actors, to me, is very amusing and a great example of how this movie has moments that really work. When we are having fun with the absurdity of how this world operates, I am instantly transported back to the way the original movie and cartoon made me feel. Aside from every scene with Dafoe, my biggest praise for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the use of both practical and stop-motion animation elements, which are integrated seamlessly into the film with the digital effects. Yes, there are some definite green screen moments, but they aren’t overwhelmingly relied upon like many of the movies released today. In fact, the use of the practical effects really helps make the first and second movie feel cohesive. One decades-later sequel that doesn’t pull this off very well is Ghostbusters, in that both the 2016 reboot and the 2018 Afterlife sequel are overly CGI’d, with an aesthetic that doesn’t mesh with the effects of the originals.
Performance wise, I think the standout is, no surprise, Keaton. He is just perfect as this character, and regardless of how well this movie does financially, I hope we can get more chances for him to play this character sooner rather than later. I wish Keaton and Beetlejuice were treated with the same attention that Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool have been getting recently — the two characters are rather similar, and I think Keaton would be smart to lean into it. I want to put Beetlejuice in every possible scenario imaginable and see where Keaton can take it. I appreciate that the movie never repeats any of his jokes from the original movie for a cheap laugh, and I love that he has such a lock on this character. What I don’t love is how antiquated the writing for him feels. For one, I can’t think of a single quote from this movie that will become repeatable enough to make this movie stand out. Oddly enough, with more than double the screen time of the original, it felt like he has even less to do this time around. Don’t get me wrong, he is funny, but it’s more generic humor rather than specific to the character. There are so many talented comedy writers nowadays that could have really punched up his dialogue. If we do end up getting sequels, I hope the studio takes a page out of the Bad Boys: Ride or Die, school of moviemaking, and keep the creatives on as producers, but let fresh blood take a crack at the writing and directing.
In addition to Keaton, I really love Ryder’s reprisal of Lydia. She was able to seamlessly slip on this character like a well-worn gothic dress. This really is her movie, as she is trying to juggle so much, but she gives it her all to carry the film. Even when the movie shifts to give Ortega the spotlight, it always comes back around to Lydia. When Lydia and Beetlejuice finally get together toward the third act, that is when the movie really starts to cook, even if it doesn’t last long enough to be satisfying. The only thing I don’t like about Lydia as a character is the annoying trope of having our legacy character being the worst version of themselves. I don’t understand the obsession in Hollywood of when a character comes back 30 years later, they have to be a rundown shell of who they once were, damaged in some way. O’Hara even has a line midway through where she tells Lydia to find that spirited goth girl of the past to get out of the funk she’s in, and I wish the writer of this line was aware enough have heeded their own advice for the character.
I also really enjoyed O’Hara’s return as Delia, but she was maybe about 15 percent too far over the top for my liking, especially at the start of the film. If I didn’t know any better, I would say O’Hara was having trouble separating Delia Deetz from Moria Rose (Schitt’s Creek), because I was seeing too much of the latter bleed through the performance. The last performance I enjoyed was Ortega, who very easily could have just fallen back on her Wednesday character, but doesn’t. However, as much as I liked Ortega in this role, I realized something that is not sitting well with me: She never interacts with Beetlejuice. I have been wracking my brain and asking anyone who has seen it to remind me if I’m missing something ,but other than one scene at the end of the movie, I can’t even be sure if Keaton and Ortega were ever even on set together. The conspiracy theory part of my brain is convinced that after the success of Wednesday, they secured Ortega on this project after it already finished principle photography, rewrote as much of the movie as they could to add her in, and filmed what they could to insert into an already existing movie, cutting much of the Neitherworld plot as possible to make room. Maybe I’m crazy, but it’s equally as crazy to have Ortega, one of the hottest new actors in Hollywood, to never interact with Beetlejuice. Why wouldn’t the movie be the two of them together at every single turn?
This feels like a good place to transition to what doesn’t work about the movie. There is a part of me that doesn’t want to take it to task, because Beetlejuice Beetlejuice really does have it’s car pointed in the right direction from time to time. Unfortunately, that car is being driven by a crazy person while a second more unhinged crazy person with glaucoma is trying to wrestle the wheel away from them…
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice just absolutely fails at telling one single, compelling, and cohesive story. As I mentioned up top, there have been many attempts, spanning 30 years, to make a sequel, and honestly, this movie feels like they stitched together one scene from each of these failed sequel attempts to create one weird Frankenstein’s monster of a movie (or in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s case, one “Delores” of a movie). Delores being the biggest pitfall. The movie introduces her pretty early on as a way to seemingly get the Neitherworld plot moving. She is accidentally released from her very punny captivity, and after stapling herself back together, she goes on a killing spree, sucking the souls of a janitor and a dry cleaner. After that, she isn’t seen again for about an hour. Meanwhile, actor/detective Wolf Jackson is trying to hunt her down and warn Beetlejuice. Which would have been a fun premise on its own, Beetlejuice having to hide from his ex-wife, and he decides to hide out with the Deetz family. But that’s not what the movie does — instead, it drops that plot for 60 percent of the movie in favor of two other separate problems in the land of the living.
Lydia and Astrid’s story feels like maybe another avenue for a decent years-later sequel where a mother and daughter must rekindle their relationship after becoming estranged due to the death of their husband/father. And for the most part, I will give the movie credit that Astrid’s story does stick to that pretty well; however, it stops the movie dead and adds an unnecessary plot involving a boy in town who has his own plans, which land them both in the Neitherworld themselves to find her dead dad, among other things. I thought at first that maybe this boy was really Beetlejuice in disguise as a way to trick Astrid into going to the Neitherworld so he could somehow get Lydia to marry him… Again (which is amusingly still one of his major motivations). But no, the movie passes up the opportunity to tell a story that cohesively brings together the characters in one plot line in favor of a more convoluted one.
But the worst part of this movie, the thing that made me cringe from start to finish, is the presence of Theroux’s Rory character. Imagine taking Delia Deetz from the first movie, dialing her up to 11, and then making her so unlikable that you are just waiting for her to die at the end: That would only be a fraction of how annoying Rory is in this movie. The movie just can’t nail down what it wants this character to be in relation to everything else. None of his lines are funny, he doesn’t have chemistry with anyone he shares a scene with, his dialogue causes every scene he’s in to grind to a halt, and it’s so clear that he belongs in a completely different movie altogether. The movie wants us to believe that Lydia has become depressed and dependent on Rory to exist. I am sure there are actual relationships like this, but the movie doesn’t include this element to feel more like real life; it does it to try and make Rory a punchline, and it doesn’t work in the slightest. Eliminate him and give Bellucci more to do and you make the movie 25 percent more fun.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is just a mess structurally, and disappointing for anyone hoping to see a coherent return to this world. And this feeling is really only compounded by the fact that there were three decades to perfect it. The filmmakers have no excuse for delivering a movie that feels incomplete at best, and completely mishandled at worst. Burton may be a little too out of touch to have as much control as he did. I mean, there is a whole dance number dedicated to the tired and vaguely offensive joke of the characters riding a “soul train.” He also has trouble not repeating beats from the original, like musical moments and sandworm attacks. But at the same time, he absolutely nails the atmosphere and tone that the movie needs, while also giving us new elements to enjoy. I particularly loved the black-and-white subtitled scene where Beetlejuice provides some entertaining exposition. As well as a musical number set to the tune of Jimmy Webb’s “MacArthur Park” (even if that scene does last a little too long). I am so torn with my opinion of this movie, because I see the good trying to peak through. I feel like I could have written three fun Beetlejuice movies with the scattered plot lines of this one movie! Why couldn’t ANYONE attached to this production do the same? It is maddening to me.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice isn’t bad, but it is a far cry from good. I hate to compare it to the original, but the first Beetlejuice really does have a very straightforward plot about a couple and their troubles that arise after they die and come back as ghosts. One sentence to describe the plot is all it takes, but with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, I needed at least three paragraphs and a bulletin board and string to connect all the dots. I want to both recommend and warn all at the same time, but as much as it does frustrate me, I really hope we get a Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. For one thing, the promise of that title is too good to pass up, and secondly, as I said earlier, I really think there is potential if given over to a new creative team. If you are a fan of the original then I feel like you may have a similar time as me, but I am not sure what it would be like going in with a fresh set of eyes. My kids have seen the original Beetlejuice enough times to be familiar with it, yet they walked out with a resounding “meh.” So if the youth of today don’t find it entertaining, then I fear we may not get a chance at a third installment. But as sure as the number of times I previously mentioned the ghost with the most is divisible by three, if it makes enough money, I’m sure this isn’t the last we will see of… you know who!
Rating: It Was Just Okay
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is currently playing in theaters
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