By Reed Ripley
Thirty-six years ago, Tim Burton brought us Beetlejuice, a bizarre, somehow PG cult classic whose phantastic portrayal of the blurred lines between life and death has captured the imaginations and fears of going-on four generations. Although it carries on the aesthetic charm of its predecessor, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels like it carries the weight of those nearly four decades of collectively spurred imagination, and it leads to a film that never quite finds its ghoulish footing.
Famously, in the original, Beetlejuice (or Betelgeuse, if you prefer) doesn’t even show up until about half an hour into the film’s runtime, and even then, he only has 17 minutes of screentime throughout the film’s duration. Every second he was on screen was an efficient burst of surreality, delivered wonderfully through Keaton’s calculated swaying between restraint and explosion. That performance wove in and out of a very streamlined story, which allowed the film’s more audacious choices to really shine.
In contrast, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice basically jumps right in with Beetlejuice, and Keaton is all over the film. That’s not inherently a bad thing, and it’s understandable—Beetlejuice is an incredible character, and we all love Keaton. However, his heavy involvement is symptomatic of the film’s broader issue with letting go of the past. It spends an inordinate time catching up with its legacy characters (Beetlejuice, Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz, and Catherine O’Hara’s Delia Deetz) at the direct expense of new storylines, of which there are many. All the actors are doing a great job in their parts, but everything just seems forced.
That’s what’s so frustrating, too, because the brief glimpses of focused story reveal what could’ve been a delightful passing of the torch to a new cast. Namely, newcomers Jenna Ortega (playing Astrid Deetz, Lydia’s estranged daughter) and Arthur Conti (playing Jeremy, a local Winter River boy whom Astrid gravitates toward) are brilliant, and their scenes and shared storyline jump off the screen. Those moments are fleeting though, chased away by distracting subplots that don’t pay off (a literally soul-sucking ex-wife, Dolores, played by Monica Bellucci, hunting down Beetlejuice; the cringey attempts of Rory, played by Justin Theroux, to pressure Lydia into a shotgun wedding) and inevitably turns back to Lydia and Beetlejuice.
That said, the underlying elements of Beetlejuice are still there, and despite its overstuffing, it makes for an entertaining watch. One of both films’ core strengths is its depiction of the afterlife as a never-ending slog through mundanity, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice expands on that idea in fun and creative ways. Burton’s production design is also in classic form, and each set is dripping with grimy and macabre practical effects, and the film generally looks great.
The film’s ending clearly leaves the door wide open for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and if that comes to pass, hopefully Beetlejuice Beetlejuice got the nostalgia bug out of its system. Plenty of people were and are excited to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but its mile-wide, inch-deep nature may flip Beetlejuice’s legacy on its striped head—a bigtime box office smash, but quickly forgotten.
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