Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

 

Say it once, say it twice, third time's a charm! Or so I was hoping.

The long awaited sequel to the 1988 Tim Burton surprise hit? I would argue that a sequel was not really required and if it REALLY was then it would have to be on point. Afterall there is actually quite a lot one could do with this spooky creation from Burton, no denying that. But as with many many other late-in-the-day sequels of classic movies, Hollywood rarely gets it right. Alas in my opinion they still haven't really broken that trend.

Right from the get go this movie is a convoluted mess that jumps around all over the show. Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) now hosts a supernatural TV show, which makes sense, but is constantly haunted by visions of Beetlejuice. So far so good. Lydia now also has a daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who doesn't believe in ghosts and a potential husband, Rory (Justin Theroux), as her original husband died years earlier. At the same time we learn Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones) from the original movie has died in a plane crash. This leads to Delia (Catherine O'Hara) staging a huge funeral and wake at their hilltop house for Charles. 

Meanwhile in the afterlife, Beetlejuice's first wife Delores (Monica Bellucci) somehow manages to come back to life (her body was chopped up and in multiple crates) and begin her murderous campaign to find Beetlejuice (yes the dead can be killed apparently). We find out that when they were both alive Beetlejuice killed her after she poisoned him because she was in some weird cult or something. At the same time Beetlejuice is running an administrative office of bio-exorcists with a bunch of shrunken head guys, because in the first movie you had one shrunken head guy (ugh!).

Meanwhile in the afterlife, a dead actor who thinks he's a cop (because there are no real dead cops around?) is on the case of recent murders carried out by Delores. He later goes after Beetlejuice due to BJ bringing a living person into the afterlife. Astrid meets up with a boy who harbors a dark surprise leading her to the afterlife. Lydia must enter a pact with Beetlejuice meaning she must marry him...again. Jesus! Note, the Maitland's do not appear, they have ''moved on via a loophole''. Neither do we see Maxie Dean or Otho.

So here's the core issue with this movie, it's overly complicated, it's a mess of epic proportions. The first ten minutes or so I was sitting there asking myself what on earth was going on, what I was seeing didn't resemble a Beetlejuice flick. It seemed to take an age to actually get going with the numerous subplots and there's just no need! Why is this movie so complex?? We know the score from the first movie, this sequel should just be jumpin' right in.

Yes visuals wise this movie does uphold the originals (lack of budget) charm. I really appreciated that Burton and his team went with somewhat cheesy practical special effects that fell in line with the original so it felt like the same world. I really appreciated how they got the house looking just like the original both inside and out. I loved that the model town in the attic looked the same. The real town looked the same, the makeup for Keaton as Beetlejuice looked the same, the afterlife waiting room looked the same etc...They nailed it with all that stuff.

Twas also great that Burton got back all the original cast, albeit Jones who has some legal issues. Burton also added to the cast with some big names but this did not add to the actual movie, and here lies the problem. Beetlejuice himself barely pops up, although he didn't in the original this is true; but he doesn't really need to even be in his own movie! Any character could have done his job here. Willem Dafoe's dead cop actor Wolf Jackson was given too much to do going after two major characters. He needed more time for his plots. Dolores the ghost murdered didn't need to be there at all and her story just abruptly ended pointlessly, taken out in the blink of an eye when she seemed to be quite a threatening character. Her character could have been the whole plot.

Add to that the character of Jeremy, Astrid's potential boyfriend. This was a nice yet unoriginal little twist that could also have been used for the entire plot really. Alas his story also comes to an abrupt end outta nowhere when you half expected more to come. Delia Deetz did nothing of use other than be there for continuity. And Lydia's first husband, Astrid's dad, also pops up for a brief moment but doesn't really add much as does Rory who predictably turns out to be a creep.

This movie also suffers from the same issue other movies do with fanboy nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia, sticking stuff in because hey remember this! Like why are there so many shrunken-head characters now? Yes there was a single cool shrunken-head character in the original, and now there are loads of them? The movie also follows the same beats as the original to some degree. There's a weird musical set because there was one in the original (Day-o). Lydia enters the model town with Rory just as Adam and Barbara did. We go to the land of the sandworms again (what exactly is that supposed to be? Are they really on Saturn's moon Titan?). Beetlejuice does the same tricks he did before, and the ending is essentially the same revolving around saving someone from a wedding.

I also did not like how there are various different stages in the afterlife now. I always thought the afterlife was the afterlife, that was it, a kooky bureaucratic nightmare. Turns out there's a hell and a great beyond also. Then there's the whole 'soul train' gag. So every dead person is riding the train presumably to the great beyond (heaven). Every dead person is a soul, they're riding a train, so it's a 'soul train'...cue a constant gag with every dead person being a disco dancer from the 70's. Really? 

So the finale sees a literal clash of multiple subplots as they collide into one another resulting in not very much, a complete disappointment. I still can't believe the whole thing ends in almost identical fashion as the original, sheesh! This movie is terribly overblown with, what seems like, tonnes of different ideas from different people or Burton not being able to decide which route to take. There are virtually three or four potential full movies going on here, all crammed into this movie. Does Keaton steal the show? Yeah kinda, he's still got the juice as it were, not as rude or rambunctious as before but he's still got it. Does this save the movie or make it worth a watch? In my opinion no it doesn't save the movie. Is it worth a watch? Yeah, it's alright I guess, although I think a constant stream of poor to bog-standard movies has indoctrinated people into now accepting poor to bog-standard guff. This is mildly better.

5/10