Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
★ ½
It’s been 36 years since Michael Keaton first appeared onscreen as the mischievous afterlife entity Beetlejuice. Now he’s back as the title character with several familiar faces and director Tim Burton once again at the helm.
Unfortunately, this movie staggers through various sub plots that fail to drive the story, because there’s no overarching plot for them to carry. Some of these subplots are fun to watch, but they lose their way, come to an abrupt conclusion or just simply get lost without a meaningful story thread.
Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz and Justin Theroux as Rory
© 2024 Warner Bros. Pictures
The original film told a story of a married couple who move into a Vermont home, die in a freak car accident and haunt the house in order to scare the new obnoxious homeowners away. They befriend the homeowners’ daughter and have a change of heart. When the maniacal Beetlejuice is released, they work with the daughter to put him back in his place and find a way to make peace with the quirky new homeowners.
The daughter is Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) and when this sequel begins, she’s grown up and has a teenage daughter of her own, Astrid Deetz (Jenna Ortega). Astrid is very much like Lydia at her age: moody, dresses in black and questions everything about her mother’s existence.
Jenna Ortega as Astrid Deetz
© 2024 Warner Bros. Pictures
The mother-daughter dramatic cycle appropriately carries itself over to a new generation in this film. For the most part it works as Lydia tries to navigate this along with the questionable advice from her step-mother, Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara).
We first see Lydia hosting a show called Ghost House which is produced by her boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux). Astrid attends a private school for girls and has trouble fitting in. Both are brought back to the house in the first film after Lydia’s dad, Charles, is eaten by a shark following a commercial plane crash.
Yes, that’s a fantastical death. And it fits in the Beetlejuice world.
Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson
© 2024 Warner Bros. Pictures
They’re all there to pack up Charles’ things and help Delia move on. Of course, this is where one thing will lead to another and Beetlejuice will eventually be released to once again wreak havoc on the lives of the Deetz family.
In this outing, we’re also introduced to Beetlejuce’s wife, Delores (Monica Bellucci), a powerful spirit who can suck the soul out of anyone – including the dead. Delores has a bone to pick with Beetlejuice and spends the first quarter of the movie trying to track him down in the afterlife. But she then mostly disappears from the story until the end, with a couple of scenes sprinkled in here and there to show us she’s still lurking.
For example, deceased action star Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe) is the head of the administration department in the afterlife where newly dead souls are sorted and either move on or stick around for a while. When he was alive, he did all of his own action stunts in his career as an actor. And that’s why he’s a dead administration executive. He runs the administration like a police precinct. His assistant, Jane (Amy Nuttall), exists to throw flirty eyes his way and make sure he always has a cup of coffee. Dafoe plays his role well, but it’s a thread that goes virtually nowhere.
Monica Bellucci as Delores
© 2024 Warner Bros. Pictures
Astrid finds herself a love interest that quickly presents an intriguing plot twist. The problem is, this goes almost nowhere, is resolved quickly and conveniently, and serves no real purpose to the story.
What we’re left with is a grouping of messy scenes and sequences that serve up some nostalgia from the first film and some innovative Tim Burton imagery, but little else.
‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ was such a tired and jumbled mess I found myself checking my watch to see how much runtime was left.
Keaton does a good job of bringing Beetlejuice back to life, but Burton fails to deliver a relevant story for him to really play into.
If this is the offering 36 years in the making, perhaps ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ should have remained in development hell.
Running Time: 1h 45m
Directed by: Tim Burton
Written by: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar
Starring: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe, Amy Nuttall
Comedy, Fantasy
