By If you were a gambling person and wanted to bet on whether a movie was going to be good or bad, saying that a legacy sequel was going to be bad would be one of the safest bets in Hollywood. Due to failure after failure, any attempt at reviving a long-dormant franchise is almost guaranteed to fail either critically or commercially. Sometimes both! Nobody wants them except for diehard fans (and even then that’s questionable) but Hollywood keeps pumping them out because they’re seen as “safe.” They’re established franchises, so they should make money, yet studios forget that they also have to be good, resulting in a string of disappointing and outright bad releases.
So I went into Beetlejuice Beetlejuice with low expectations. I wasn’t aiming to hate it, but I also wasn’t holding my breath either. It’s been ages since I saw the original 1988 movie, so my memory of it is fuzzy, but I remember the basic details. So, to my absolute shock, I found that I didn’t hate the movie. I didn’t even slightly dislike it or think it was mediocre. I actually… like it? I mean, it’s not going to be regarded as an all-time classic, but for what it is, it’s probably the best legacy sequel I’ve seen in years. Granted, that bar is pretty low, but it’s still an accomplishment.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Director: Tim Burton
Release Date: September 6, 2024 (Theatrical)
Rating: PG-13
Set 36 years after the first film, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is now the host of a ghost-themed talk show and has a strained relationship with her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega). Astrid misses her dead father and doesn’t believe her mom can see ghosts because, if she did, then she would be able to commune with her father. Lydia then gets the news from her stepmom, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), that her father is dead and they have to go back to Winter River to deal with the funeral arrangements.
Meanwhile, in the afterlife, Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) is still causing mischief, but is on the run from his ex-wife Dolores (Monica Bellucci), and tries to involve himself in the Deetz family drama to escape from her. This, of course, involves him trying to marry Lydia. Still, things get even more complicated when Astrid falls for a ghost boy who takes her soul to try and revive himself. Then things get EVEN MORE complicated when Lydia’s boyfriend, Rory (Justin Theroux), proposes to her and declares that they’ll have a wedding in two days on Halloween.
There’s a lot happening in the plot of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. At times it comes across as scattershot, with the film constantly flipping from one plot thread to another and shifting its focus haphazardly. It makes the story feel directionless as we’re thrown around from scene to scene and just expected to roll with it. It’s never hard to keep up with and it doesn’t feel like scenes were cut to make it fit a certain runtime. No, this feels intentionally designed, which makes some parts all the more puzzling. Despite how much she’s shown in the trailers, Monica Bellucci is hardly in the movie and despite the buildup she receives, she does absolutely nothing and just wanders around from scene to scene.
Copyright: Warner Bros
Thankfully, that’s not a grave offense since the bulk of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice still succeeds at making people laugh. I know that Tim Burton and Michael Keaton have been trying for decades to make this movie, but parts of the movie feel so fresh and lively that it would be a perfect fit for an early 90s family comedy. Michael Keaten is still great as Betelguese, portraying this manic and crass trickster who revels in being a nuisance to people. While he never gets the chance to bounce off with a ton of people outside of Winona Ryder, his scenes are easily the highlight of the film. He’s just so damn charming and the ways he mocks, annoys, and distorts reality are so cartoonish I can’t help but laugh.
That isn’t to say that other characters aren’t as interesting or as funny, because the cast is overall fairly strong. Catherine O’Hara is having a blast and Willem Dafoe, who plays a grizzled detective who was an actor before he died, is mugging it for the camera in a way that only Willem Dafoe can do. Nobody is taking this film too seriously, but they’re also not making this a parody of the original film. Sure, there are callbacks and references to the original movie that newcomers probably won’t understand, but they’re not shoving them in your face and expecting you to laugh at their mere inclusion. They don’t belittle the legacy of the original film. They respect what came before, never undermine what happened, and outside of some weird lines explaining why certain characters from the original film aren’t here, it’s all pretty smooth and seamless.
I also have to respect the focus on more practical special effects. While there is some pretty obvious CGI, the vast majority of the effects are practical. There’s stop-motion animation to depict certain scenes, physical puppets are used in the afterlife, and even the model town of Winter River is still lovingly hand-crafted. Even when CGI is used, I like that it doesn’t try to make it pretty. It tries to capture that practical look with modern-day tech that can look odd, but that’s kind of the point. Parts of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice are ugly, but then again so were parts of the original. This was never meant to be a clean film and by staying true to the original film’s lack of polish, it feels more authentic. It also helps that Tim Burton is back in the director’s chair and not some random director for hire.
Copyright: Warner Bros
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a funny movie, but I do have some issues with its sense of humor. At points, it feels like it doesn’t know when to end a joke. Towards the end of the film, there’s a joke involving the song “MacArthur Park” that I got a good chuckle at. Then it escalates the joke and it becomes a wee bit funnier. Then it escalates again, but it doesn’t get funnier, so when the film decides to keep escalating things further and further with “MacArthur Park,” it stops being funny. Restraint is an important element of humor. Hell, some of my favorite gags in the film are just little moments that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t even draw attention to. They exist and are funny because the film wisely chose not to highlight them.
I’m also torn about the new cast members. While I don’t have much of an issue with Jenna Ortega as an actress, she doesn’t really add a whole lot to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. She fulfills the same role Lydia did in the original film and keeps the focus of this film, like the original, on intergenerational family drama, but she doesn’t add much as a character. The film struggles to find a purpose for the new characters since most of the film’s strengths are in its focus on the returning cast. Actors like Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, and Monica Bellucci are fine, but they feel underdeveloped when compared to Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t completely replicate the original 1988 film, but it does feel like a natural sequel in all of the right ways. It keeps up the same type of comedy from the first film and while it may have some problems at times reigning it in, it still made me chuckle. The returning cast members all returned to their roles pretty well too, but the newer additions feel underdeveloped and at times one note. It’s a minor miracle that this movie turned out as well as it did because it could have very easily been a soulless legacy sequel that exists solely to make money. That’s still true at the end of the day, but at the very least Beetlejuice Beetlejuice seems to be enjoying itself and everyone here is having a fun time. It’s no masterpiece, but it’s a pleasant surprise.
