Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Review by Mark Woodring

You guys know how much I hate hyperbolic movie reviews, right? I mean, not everything can be the best/worst film since the history of ever, can it?

No. No they can’t.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I hate what I’m about to say about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

**NOTE: You can read Mark’s review below, then use the players to listen (or watch) as he and Ryan discuss the movie in more depth. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice - Review
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Warner Brothers)

 

104 Minutes, Rated PG-13
Written by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, Seth Grahame-Smith
Directed by Tim Burton

Synopsis:

After a family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her teenage daughter, Astrid, accidentally opens the portal to the Afterlife.

 

https://youtu.be/wCJCqZ51y6I

Full disclosure: I never considered myself a “fan” of the original Beetlejuice. I mean, it was kind of creepy, kind of cute, and Geena Davis and Alex Baldwin really did carry that movie, in my opinion. Now, 36 years after that surprisingly accessible hit, we get the sequel people have been clamoring for since 1988.

36 years is a long time, though. I mean, Blade Runner: 2049 tried to follow a classic film from 1982, which is just as long as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice‘s gap, and the jury is still out on how well that one will play, in the long term.

At least Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has Tim Burton back behind the camera and Michael Keaton back at the titular undead troublemaker, so fans have that to look forward to.

But is it enough?

No. I don’t think it is. Worse than that, I think it’s not even good, despite what the box office projections might have you believe.

Let’s go back for a moment to figure out exactly why I feel this way.

I’m sure we can all agree that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a film that falls easily into the recently-emergent category of “legacy sequels:” follow-ups to older films instead of more immediate, traditional sequels. There’s really only two ways these kind of movies can go: very good, or very, very bad.

And it all boils down to how they handle nostalgia.

On the good side, we’ve got Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which took a beloved setting and group of characters and found a way to move them forward, touching on — but not abusing — inside jokes and Easter Eggs for older fans while simultaneously, and logically, introducing a new set of characters to focus on in that world, and giving them a story worth caring about.

On the bad side, one of the worst offenders has to be Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which simply threw so much “Inside Star Wars” material at the screen that it overshadowed anything else they might have been trying to do with the movie (not that JJ Abrams seemed to be trying to do much, at any rate).
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice most assuredly falls into the latter category. Michael Keaton, reviving one of his beloved cinematic roles for the second time in 2 years (after 2023’s The Flash, when his Batman/Bruce Wayne returned to the big screen), tries his hardest to make this one interesting, but it’s not.

Simply, and most hyperbolic-soundingly, put: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a cynical cash-grab. It’s nostalgia porn wrapped up in pseudo-modern sensibilities.

I said it.

There is no plot twist that isn’t seem coming. No lame joke untold. Not a single ham-fisted emotional moment that isn’t telegraphed a mile away, and an ending that couldn’t come quickly enough.

The loss of Jeffrey Jones as Lydia’s father is keenly felt, although his character, Charles, is in the movie (sort of), as what Bruce Campbell might call a “Fake Shemp.” The voice must be done via sound-alike, else Jones would have been credited for the film, which he is not (owing to factors we’ll not discuss).

So with one father out of the picture, we don’t even get Astrid’s (Jenna Ortega) father, as he was previously lost in the Amazon.

No fathers, but we do get a weasely beta-male boyfriend for Lydia, who is now hosting “Ghost House,” a paranormal investigation show in which she speaks to the dead to help people figure out what is happening in their own houses.

But she can’t see or speak to her dead husband. This is a running complaint throughout the movie, by the way. She probably can’t see him dead because they were having problems before he died.

She probably couldn’t “see” him then, either.

The scenes featuring Beetlejuice are just points to move our story between various mother-daughter combination conversations, which are cliche and boring.

The afterlife world doesn’t feel like the dark parody of the first film; it feels like what something came up with that they thought was edgy.

But the literal “Soul Train” to the Beyond was terrible.

Not that there weren’t a couple of interesting ideas and great characters in here (I’m looking at you, Willem Dafoe), but it’s too little, far too late.

The songs from the first film are recycled (badly). Visuals are reused (badly). It all just comes off as just a ploy to separate those who legitimately loved the first film from their hard-earned dollars but reuniting them with what was great when they were younger.

And it’s apparently going to work, based on box office projections.

Those who were going to see this one are going to see it, but if you don’t need to see it in the theater, wait for streaming.

It’ll be on Max by Christmas.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will be summoned into theaters Friday, September 6, and stars Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Michael Keaton, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, Arthur Conti, Burn Gorman, and Santiago Cabrera.

And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.

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