Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: A Review

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

This is the Age of the Nostalgia Sequel, where we have to have a sequel on an old film from decades past. We had Twisters. We had Ghostbusters Frozen Empire. We had Mean Girls (though to be fair, that was the film version of the musical which was based on the film). That is not even going into prequels and remakes, such as The First Omen and The Crow. Now we have Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to a thirty-six-year-old film. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is probably not the worst film of 2024. It is probably not even the worst Nostalgia Sequel of 2024. It is, rather, a pointless waste of time, with so much going on that ultimately nothing happens. 

Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is now the hostess of Ghost House, where she communicates with the dead. She is startled when she has visions of her old nemesis Betelgeuse flashing. These visions do not concern Lydia's producer/boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux) a great deal. However, Lydia learns from her stepmother Delia (Catherine O'Hara) that Lydia's father Charles has died. Lydia, Delia and Rory now go to Charles' funeral and have to pick up Lydia's estranged daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) up at her prep school.

Astrid is still hostile to her mother ever since her father Richard disappeared in the Amazon. She is more appalled when Rory takes the opportunity to propose marriage to Lydia, insisting that it be at midnight on Halloween, a mere three days away. Astrid makes friends with local boy Jeremy (Arthur Conti), who is not what he appears to be in more ways than one.

Someone who is what he definitely appears to be is Beetlejuice himself (Michael Keaton), determined to get his slimy fingers on Lydia. He has his own issues with the sudden return of his ex-wife Delores (Monica Bellucci), out for revenge after he chopped up her body due to her trying to literally suck his soul when both were alive. She is wandering around the halls of the afterlife, as are Astrid and Jeremy. Will the dead Richard (Santiago Cabrera) be able to save his daughter? Will Delia find that those asps are not as safe as she thought? Will Beetlejuice get his mortal woman?

I have never been one who held Beetlejuice as this masterful film. It is a fine film, entertaining and quirky. However, I never joined the cult around it, or of any film made in my lifetime. With that being said, I am surprised over how Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is being made out to be some delightful romp and nice throwback to the beloved original. In reality, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a hollow, pointless film, with various plots wandering around in total confusion and conflict. 

In my plot recap, I did not mention Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson, a B-movie action star who is now a cop in the afterlife pursuing Delores. Why is that? Well, it is because for long stretches of a surprisingly short film, he is pretty much forgotten in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. I had actually forgotten that Delores was in the film at all as well. We learn about Delores' backstory through Beetlejuice himself in a faux-Italian film scene, which to be fair was not terrible.

I pause to note that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is only twelve minutes longer than Beetlejuice. Despite that, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels infinitely longer than the first one. I put it down to the fact that the sequel has so many characters that feel so unnecessary. I figured the Jeremy/Astrid subplot alone could have been enough for one movie. The Delores subplot alone could have been enough for one movie. The conflict between Lydia and Astrid alone could have been enough for one movie. Yes, you can combine one or two of those, but all of them do not mesh into a cohesive whole. 

The alleged twist with Jeremy is so obvious that I wrote in my notes "Jeremy--are parents dead? Him too?". I wonder if screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (with a screen story by Gough and Millar along with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter writer Seth Grahame-Smith) watched Toy Story 2 and/or Toy Story 3 before working on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. When Betelgeuse's minions escape into the real world (another subplot that I do not think was resolved), I got flashbacks to the original Jumanji. 

As a side note, when we get to the second wedding attempt from Betelgeuse to Lydia, I wondered what exactly happened to the influencers invited to the wedding ceremony. I won't bother wondering why the wedding had to take place at midnight on Halloween or why Father Damien (Burn Gorman) would agree to any of this. I also won't bother wondering why MacArthur Park, of all the songs in the world, is the one used for a variation of the Day-O (Banana Boat Song) scene in Beetlejuice. I like to think that "Father Damien" is a nod to The Omen, but honestly, I think that is giving Beetlejuice Beetlejuice far too much credit.

I was genuinely surprised that the various subplots were resolved shockingly quickly. The Jeremy subplot was solved so fast that perhaps the film should have ended there. The Delores subplot was equally resolved so quickly that it all seemed pretty pointless to be there at all. The absence of the Maitlands from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was shockingly lazy. "We found a loophole" that let them move on, Lydia says. What was that loophole? How did it come about? Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was not going to tell us. It only had to give us some reason, no matter how vague, to explain away that they were not there. It was pretty much insulting, and I do not know why Beetlejuice fans just went along with it. 

I could not shake the idea that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice could have gone in so many different ways, explored so many different routes, but opted instead to go everywhere and nowhere. 

I do not think that there was much in performances. I might exempt Catherine O'Hara, who did her best to be that wacky artiste not totally aware of things. Michael Keaton too did well as Betelgeuse, even having a bit of a romp when discussing his life with Delores. I did, however, wonder if Winona Ryder was genuinely shocked to be in the film, for there was this look of desperation to her performance. Justin Theroux knew the character was dumb and played it that way. Willem Dafoe was just happy to be working, and I don't think cared if he was necessary. 

Perhaps some begrudging credit should be thrown at director Tim Burton for going out of his way to not include the disgraced Jeffery Jones in the film. Yes, his character died, but we got a Claymation reenactment of his final moments and then his dismembered corpse popping in and out sans reason. Ortega played the part of the insufferable Astrid correctly, so there's that. Conti, to his credit, at least left open the idea that Jeremy might be a lot of things. Is he a ghost himself? Is he a living person who, like Lydia, can speak to ghosts and might be unaware that he can speak to them or that his parents might be dead? Is he a ghost that is unaware that he is dead? 

Again, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice could have gone so many different ways. Why it opted to go the way it went is to me, a sign that it did not care.  

The one part that I thought was clever was the Soul Train section. I will leave it to readers to decide if having soul music playing while black people dance and a vaguely Don Cornelius conductor lead the actual Soul Train to either Heaven or Hell is a stereotype. However, at least that seemed to be a clever bit.

Apart from that, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is just there. What it is, what it wants, I can't guess at. Yes, at least it is way better than Argylle.

Seriously, of all the songs in the world, MacArthur Park? 

DECISION: D-