A Flawed but Faithful Sequel – Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Movie Review)

“The ghost with the most is back.

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.” – Letterboxd Sypnosis

I feel like most people my age range or older have their Tim Burton movie that they just adored as a child and they grew up with. For me it was Edward Scissor Hands. For a lot of people, it was Beatlejuice. I actually didn’t end up watching Beatlejuice for the first time until last October and I was very happy with how well that movie holds up today. The story and characters are very fun. The practical effects and direction are great. It’s one of those movies that will (and has) stand the test of time. In the times that we live in with sequels and reboots that are mostly unnecessary and at minimum add nothing to the already established legacy of their franchise and at most almost seem to actively want to tarnish that legacy. Beatlejuice Beatlejuice is refreshing. It’s not perfect, it’s not as good as the first one. It is a solid-good movie with many faults, but it definitely feels in the spirit of the original. This is a worthy sequel in my eyes.

The benefit of doing this sequel now is that there is a natural time skip. Now the little girl who saw ghosts is a grown woman who sees ghosts and has her own show profiting off of her supernatural abilities and she also has a teenage daughter. I love Winona Rider. She’s an icon and her awkward and scared but also hardened portrayal of an older version of a character that she played when she was a child was great. Really all of the characters (that got enough screen time) were great. Catherine O’hara, as Delia, was just a delight with her eccentric, egotistical artistic, often melodramatic view on everything. I loved her. Jenna Ortega as Astrid was good as the skeptic distant daughter of Lidia Deetz. I just kinda wish she had more to do in this movie. Willem Defoe’s as Wolf Jackson great because it’s Willem Defoe. You could have him play a brick wall with no lines and he’d still steal the show. But then, of course, there’s the star, Michael Keaton as Beatlejuice. Watching this movie just made me realize how much more Michael Keaton I need. The sassy, wise cracking, crass, Beatlejuice he just brings to life so well. Every time he was on screen the movie was at its best.

The characters do so much heavy lifting in this movie it almost makes me forgive the mess of a plot. I do really like this movie. It’ll probably become a nice comfort movie when it releases digital (next month for some odd reason. Please let movies breathe more in the theatre) but I have to be pretty negative right now. This movie feels like it had two ideas for a plot and instead of deciding on one and dropping the other. Instead, it just mashed them together, giving no room for either to breathe properly, making characters feel useless, and leading to rushed conclusions. It really sucks to cause there are genuinely two very potentially interesting villains with solid motives and interesting backstories in this movie that if given enough time to actually be fleshed out, I think this movie could’ve potentially been better than the last one. But one villains story ended up being bland and gets resolved like 60% through the movie and the other has maybe a handful of short scenes before their story gets resolved just very quickly at the end during one of best (and many lovely) musical numbers in this movie. The only reason they seem to exist is to make it logical enough for Lidia and crew to be in the situations that they end up in and it’s just a shame, cause both of them could’ve been so much more.

Also I have to mention how great the practical and most of the CGI effects are, but there are a few jarring moments where it was just bad. Those few moments don’t overshadow everything else, but they’re just very apparent when compared to everything else that looks great.

So yeah, Despite the mess of the plot, again I really liked this movie. I can even see myself coming to love this movie with time as I re-watch it over the years. That’s just how strong everything else outside of the plot is. The characters are amazing, the dialogue is fun. So many show stealers that it really almost makes up for everything underwhelming here. A pretty flawed sequel that still feels within the spirit of the first movie and is a good time nonetheless.

Beatlejuice Beatlejuice – 8/10