- Starring
- Michael Keaton, Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe
- Director
- Tim Burton
- Rating
- Not Yet Rated
- Genre
- Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
- Release date
- Sept. 6, 2024
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice follows Lydia Deetz, now the Maury Povitch of ghost-hunting mediums, and her renowned and successful artist stepmother, Delia. When Lydia’s father, Chuck, suddenly dies, the two ladies, who have more or less reconciled over the intervening years, gather up Lydia’s teenage occult-skeptic daughter and head to Winter River for his funeral.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Review
It’s not overstating things to say that the original Beetlejuice was a cultural phenomenon. Coming from the mind of the little-known director of another surprise hit, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, three years prior (a lifetime in Hollywood), The Ghost with The Most took the world by storm. With a budget of only $15 million, peopled with bizarre yet lovable characters, and featuring Tim Burton’s now signature quirky gothic flair, the film went on to gross over $70 million, spawned a successful cartoon series, and spent decades indelibly infused into pop culture.
Then there was Beetlejuice Beeltejuice. Written by a team whose credits include 217 episodes of Smallville (I found that out after I made the CW crack above), the long-awaited sequel can charitably be described as a bloated corpse of creative human effluence.
Following in the footsteps of far too many modern films, this flick is an aimless and pointless mess of competing subplots eating up the runtime in the hopes that at least one will find footing and ring a smile out of audiences. They don’t. Instead, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice stitches together a patchwork golem of subplots ranging from the shallowest of creative graves to irrelevant nonsense.
For instance, the always stunning, sometimes underrated Monica Belluci plays Delores, a powerful specter from Beetlejuice’s past who, once released from captivity, is hellbent on revenge… for approximately five to six minutes of total screentime. Her role, initially full of promise thanks to a darkly fun, if mildly redundant and obvious, introduction, quickly expires, relegating her to underdeveloped background noise and a quick and easy fix to otherwise untenable plot inconveniences.
Thanks to his award-winning performances in films like Birdman and The Founder (recommended), not to mention roles in the billion-dollar Spider-Man: Homecoming and his nostalgarific return as Batman in the disappointing Flash movie, Michael Keaton has seen quite the resurgence in American cinema these past few years. Getting his start in the 80s as a stand-up comedian, the multi-faceted actor seamlessly slips back into his black and white striped suit only to be clumsily fumbled around as an underutilized prop to force one of the story’s numerous subplots forward or as an afterthought in a scene that is little more than promotional trailer fodder. On the best of occasions, the once-dynamic character is slapped in front of the audience in an easter egg locale or costume to defibrillate the DOA main plot with the empty husk of humorless humor.
The family dynamic between Lydia and her bitter, virtually estranged daughter Astrid, the reconciliation of which is ostensibly the film’s aforementioned main plot, consists of little more than a never-ending succession of creatively stagnant and brutally redundant scenes singularly purposed to remind the audience that the two don’t get along and haven’t gotten along since the death of Astrid’s father and that Astrid doesn’t believe in ghosts.
Then there’s the subplot that begins with a meet-cute between Astrid and a neighborhood boy and ends with a fizzle. Then, there’s Chuck’s subplot as his corpse attempts to navigate the afterlife. Then, there’s Delia’s subplot in which she mourns the loss of her husband. Then, there’s one of two of Lydia’s subplots. Then, the other. Next, there’s one for Beetlejuice as well. Are you getting the point? It’s all too much, and not a single one lands.
Perhaps if just one legacy character, aside from the nearly invisible one on the marquee, behaved marginally close to that of their original iterations, or if more than a hint of the cohesive, delightfully stylized storytelling from 1988’s entry existed, there would be something upon which to glob. Unfortunately, Tim Burton’s iron has chilled to corpse-cold as he shows he no longer has any idea how to manage a large ensemble cast and is unwilling or unable to exert his will upon a script unsuitable for toilet paper.
In the end, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice reads like the final result of a game of telephone that began with the telling of the classic original and ended in an unholy simulacrum of disjointed paper doll characters, a thinner story, and the utter unraveling of greatness.
WOKE ELEMENTS
DEI
- Was Jenna Ortega the best actress for the role, or the best way to artificially insert some diversity into an otherwise pasty white family? I don’t know. You don’t know. And that’s the problem with DEI.
Girls, Girls, Girls
- With one exception, all of the men are murderers, demonic spirits, bumbling corpses, dimwitted gold diggers, ineffective fools, or silly priests.
- Even Beetlejuice cowers in terror at a superior female poltergeist.
Livin’ La Vida Loca
- The one exception to the previous element is the Latino male, who is self-sacrificing and heroic, but even his role is nothing more than a cheap and poorly executed attempt at a third-act resolution.
How Dare You
- It’s barely mentioned and otherwise completely irrelevant to the story, but Jenna Ortega’s character is a climate activist.
- She doesn’t want to go to Chuck’s funeral because she is the head of an environmental student organization and is scheduled to present the students’ “demands on climate change.”
- It’s mentioned that her dad died doing something environmentally heroic (I honestly can’t remember what)
- A newly arrived ghost enters the lobby covered in oil and carrying a sign that says, “Drilling is killing.” Were it not for the above, one could be excused for thinking that it was making fun of hippy protestors, but it is not.
I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar
- Ortega’s character dresses up as Marie Curie for Halloween, which isn’t at all woke, but she makes sure to toss in the line that she is a “feminist icon.”
A Christian Walked Into A Bar
- One of several narratively worthless yet inexplicably recurring characters is a Catholic priest who repeatedly attempts to provide comfort by espousing meaningless, rambling, platitudinal, vaguely faith-based babble.
James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
14 comments
bowill01
September 5, 2024 at 9:11 am
Not going to watch this one, but Jenna Ortega was pretty good as Wednesday Adams, so maybe she was legit the best choice for this style.
Ktuff_morning
September 23, 2024 at 12:29 pm
I’ll bet she’s already hitting the wall. Next stop duck lips.
Aloysius T. McKeever
September 6, 2024 at 8:05 pm
One of the worst movies I have ever seen.
Henry
September 7, 2024 at 2:37 pm
I like the original Beetlejuice and was holding out hope for this one, but Tim Burton has been trash for almost 20 years now, so I can’t exactly say I’m shocked by the negative reviews.
Sweet Deals
September 7, 2024 at 3:41 pm
I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert at writing movies and television, but I have a thought about unfocused storytelling.
When I was in 3rd grade, my English teacher impressed on me the importance of having a Main Idea. When writing a paragraph or telling a story, adhere to the Main Idea. You can add details that support the main idea, but you have to stick with it; anything that doesn’t support the main idea is a tangent or a digression. It’s also a good idea to form a logical sequence where one thought leads seamlessly to the next until a favorable conclusion is reached. I consider this a bare minimum for most forms of writing; a story can be ridiculous, highly derivative or annoying, but at the very least it should make sense. Even a short and simple story can be powerful if the main idea is maintained and well-supported.
For example, in the case of the original Beetlejuice, the main idea is easy to identify. The Maitlands put a lot of effort into their home and don’t want to give it up despite their untimely death. Because they’re not scary enough to scare away the Deetz family from moving in and wrecking their decor, they hire the unpredictable Beetlejuice to do it for them. However, the Deetz’s morose daughter Lydia is also unhappy with her parents, but forms a bond with the kindly Maitlands, and they come to a settlement to share the house. The main plot makes a clear point. Everything else is an embellishment, which is stylistically consistent.
I don’t know exactly when movies and television started getting written by “teams”. I used to think that shows had a production bible and individual writers took turns writing individual episodes. I’m guessing that having too many writers in the room can lead to a lack of focus because instead of creating one main idea, everyone has their own idea of what the story should look like. In order to be “inclusive” to everyone, the writers try to figure out how to stuff every idea into the story without thinking about how well they can be executed or whether or not they’ll fit together, and they end up with bloated patchwork monsters. Even though it’s painful, not every gag can fit in the main storyline. For the sake of clarity, many ideas will have to be left out. Adhering to the main idea is a simple enough strategy, but even at the professional level it can be a struggle when some truly fascinating things can’t stay in the final product in order to keep things tight and streamlined.
This guideline also works well for visual storytelling. When you go to a daycare center, many of the pictures drawn by children will be rainbows because little kids want to use every pretty color in the box. Trying to put too many colors in a single picture will make it look loud and messy, which is why it’s important to restrict the palette to colors that work well together. It’s also why many modern movie posters look like the disembodied heads of all the actors piled up on top of each other without really giving a good sense of what the movie is actually about. Not everyone’s face can be on the cover, but good poster art speaks volumes.
Jared
September 7, 2024 at 11:25 pm
Anytime I see more than one writer I do think uhh oh . And 3 or more I am scared.
JoeRock
September 9, 2024 at 3:05 pm
This was a great take
Dan
September 11, 2024 at 8:01 pm
Definitely not going to see this one. Keaton promised that it will not be woke but I knew that it would be. As soon as they reboot or make another in a franchise we loved in the 80’s I knew it would be woke because the powers that be are hell-bent on destroying our childhood favorites. They completely destroyed Star Wars for me. Star Trek is destroyed for me as well. I just know the 4th movie will be woke trash. They almost destroyed Ghostbusters, but I still think they have another movie up their sleeves in which to totally destroy it by making Egon’s granddaughter completely gay. That is the agenda these days. We see it in video games constantly. Strong, lead female in the game… turns out she’s gay. Whoa, didn’t see that coming! Yes we did. I called it in the first game with Aloy for Horizon Zero Dawn. I knew they’d make her gay in the second game and they did.
Beetlejuice will always be one of my favorites, and I will suffer with the bad effects of the 80’s and pass on the great effects on Wokejuice Wokejuice. You are a fraud, Keaton. You keep signing on to these woke pieces of garbage and I am not spending a dime on your stuff. I know, he will never see this, but I still think it’s relevant. This is why I read reviews on movies every single time. I don’t think I have spent much money on a movie since they forced all this DEI, PC, woke nonsense on people instead of just entertaining the masses.
I don’t know what’s woke because I have to shell out money for yet another subscription, which I won’t. I’ll just wait a few weeks to see what was woke or not.
Trumpsmanspunkcurescovid
September 14, 2024 at 8:17 am
You guys keep saying that this movie is super woke, but you are looking at it on the service level. Beetlejuice is an alogory about DJT. BJ isn’t afraid of being a little weird, a little brash, and little over the top. But things always work out for him in the end. This movie should be a beacon of light for us right wingers, the leftist landscape of Hollywood is slowly trying to change people’s mind about Trump because they are starting to realize that leaders like him are the best for the woirld. I for one am excited and can’t wait to have Trump 2024!
PurpleSanz
September 19, 2024 at 1:27 am
Huge fan of the original movie here. Also, a huge fan of Michael Keaton and Willem Dafoe.
Now, where do I start? The returning cast feels absolutely off: Delia used to be controlling, selfish, opportunistic, cringy and completely insufferable (a very well written character, in my opinion), and now she is just meh; Lydia used to be strange and unusual (remember?), very difficult to scare and mysterious. And now she acts like a scaredy cat as if she was totally traumatized all of a sudden, when we all saw how happy her life became at the end of the first movie; Beetlejuice is… just there, talking and talking. No good comedy, no scary scenes, no sexual humour, no “showtime”, nothing. THAT wasn’t Beetlejuice.
I still wanted to give this movie a chance… that was, until the moment I heard Jenna Ortega say the “feminist icon” crap, which is when I was done with this movie. I still finished it out of nostalgia, trying to salvage anything I could out of it, but… boy! The Willem Dafoe plot is absolutely unnecessary, Monica Bellucci’s plot goes absolutely nowhere (even the “final confrontation” scene feels so rushed and lame), and don’t even get me started with the absolutely poorly written guy-in-the-treehouse pseudo-plot. *Facepalm* The saddest part is that all those characters and plots could have worked beautifully if the script had been decent, which was not.
And yes, this movie screams “let’s make every male in this movie boring, dumb and useless” loud and clear. Too bad they also ended up doing the exact same thing to all the females.
Easily one of the worst movies I’ve ever watched in my whole life.
Ktuff_morning
September 22, 2024 at 1:12 pm
I ain’t watchin this s***. I’m reviewing your review.
LOL “meet-cute”. So reductive. So acidic.
“something upon which to glob”. I like that phrase very much. Creative word usage. For some reason it’s even better it doesn’t make sense to me. Using a seemingly negative word within a positive context suggests an attitude about the subject matter so insulting that you don’t even care enough to use the correct slur, and it seems deliberate. Sublime. I like you better when you’re wry.
Which brings us to adjective usage. Jesus. Hyperbole much? You’re winding up like Bugs Bunny to “paste this pathetic palooka with a powerful paralyzing perfect pachydermus percussion pitch”. Metaphors and similes slice deeper and bleed longer than bludgeoning with adjectives. I guess some bludgeoning can be entertaining but you really have to set it up first. You’re characterizing something about which we know not what the hell you’re talking about. Describe the reality first, then characterize. And don’t sing to the choir with your right wing bull****, if you’re clever your adjectives should highlight an unassailable truth. The ultimate test is getting an unsympathetic audiencemember such as myself to smirk. And think. Think you got what it takes?
Atheism is a joke
September 22, 2024 at 2:44 pm
Thing is, the movie isn’t woke at all. Even the reviewer here doesn’t list anything woke about it despite having it in the rating as “wokish.” There’s no LGBT propaganda or leftist values promoted.
Ktuff_morning
September 23, 2024 at 12:19 pm
That’s interesting. I would have guessed a big Hollyoowd production like this would all but guarantee woke. Could it be they are finally learning? My radar is up.
HollywoodBroken
October 2, 2024 at 8:02 pm
Pretty wokeish, Climate change is mentioned, Lydia hints at abortion by saying ” while I was 9 months pregnant, my water broke during Kill Baby Kill. And Beetlejuice ironically says “this is a safe space”. While sitting at his desk.