The original Beetlejuice is a personal favorite film. The first time I watched it, I was too young to really understand what the heck was happening, but I simply could not look away. It’s a goofy, unique movie that more than holds up decades later with its impressive makeup and effects, great jokes, and brilliant acting. It also operates very efficiently with a brisk pace and manages to tell a fantastic story in just over 90 minutes. Beetlejuice is one of those movies that could come on TV at any point, and I would be happy to watch it to its conclusion. It came out in 1988 and was a wonderful example of a great, self-contained story. Alas, we live in a world where Hollywood is so desperate for money—especially Warner Bros.—that we have to dig up franchises from the dead to make sequels and remakes because we cannot come up with anything new anymore. Thus, we get Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a film that did surprisingly well at the box office. Of course, I waited until it came to streaming to finally see it for myself.

Pros

Tim Burton’s style is still very present
Many of the jokes are funny
Michael Keaton and Catherine O’Hara carry the film
Makeup and practical effects look good
Less than two hours long

Cons

Too many aimless sub-plots going on that mostly go nowhere interesting or are wrapped up too conveniently to be satisfying
The character of Lydia is unrecognizable in comparison to her younger self in the original
Several of the main conflicts are based on contrived circumstances
Throw-away lines to cover up the fact that the main characters from the original film aren’t around
Takes a while for Beetlejuice to get involved in a significant way

Plot & Thoughts

The young girl we all know from the original film, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), has grown up and become something of a celebrity for her ability to see and interact with ghosts. She hosts a popular paranormal show on television and comes across as one of those charlatan psychics who con people out of money, but we, as the audience, know her ability is genuine. Unfortunately for her, tragedy strikes. She’s informed by her stepmother, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), that her father has died after his plane crashed in the ocean and a shark killed him. In addition, she starts seeing visions of Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), which would freak anyone out who almost married a malicious ghost when they were a teenager. She and her obviously-manipulative boyfriend, who is likely trying to con Lydia out of her fortune, Rory (Justin Theroux), go with Delia and pick up Lydia’s daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), from boarding school. Astrid has a strained relationship with her mom and holds many grudges towards her, including a sense of abandonment from when Astrid’s father died. The four of them head to the house from the original film to hold services in remembrance of Lydia’s father. During their time there, Lydia tries to reconnect with her daughter, and Astrid starts dating a boy named Jeremy (Arthur Conti), whom she meets when she randomly runs off one day.

Meanwhile, in the ghost realm, Beetlejuice’s ex-wife, Delores (Monica Bellucci), reassembles her body and begins hunting down Beetlejuice, sucking the souls out of any ghosts who cross her path. This sets the dead detective actor who played a detective when he was alive, Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), on her trail. Beetlejuice, worried that his ex will find him and suck out his soul, sets out to reunite with Lydia and get married. Not sure how that would solve anything, but it’s Beetlejuice’s logic, so whatever. Also, the decapitated corpse of Lydia’s father is roaming around the underworld trying to figure out where to go and is still capable of communicating with full sentences verbally, despite not having a head.

Now, does that sound like a lot is going on in this movie? It should, because Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has way too many characters and plot points. It somehow manages to end in under two hours, but that’s partially because it wraps everything up quickly and conveniently. There are at least five different subplots going on at once. There are the evolving relationships between Lydia and Rory, Delia, and Astrid. There’s the budding romance between Astrid and Jeremy. There’s a subplot involving Delia and some snakes that occurs halfway through the film. There’s the investigation by Wolf Jackson regarding the soul-sucking specter. And then there’s the driving plot point of Beetlejuice trying to escape his ex. Some of these reach a more satisfying conclusion, but there are a lot of shortcuts taken in the script to wrap things up.

The biggest script convenience, however, comes in how the main characters of the original film, Adam & Barbara, and their noticeable absence are written off in two lines of dialogue:

“They found a loophole and crossed over.”
“How convenient.”

Yeah, it is pretty convenient, writer! Good job acknowledging it with a self-deprecating line, as though that makes up for the fact that it was a lazy way to ignore the absence of two important characters. It’s weird that they would be given so little service in the script while Lydia’s father is referenced multiple times and his likeness is portrayed during a stop-motion section, even though he was originally played by an actor with a repulsive history. This was an example of cheap writing that made me audibly groan, but it’s not the only instance in which things are just quickly swept away or resolved. The way most of the various plots are concluded feels quick and lazy, which makes me wonder why we needed to have so many in the first place.

Subplots aside, the core theme of the movie centers around the conflicts that Lydia is having with her family and the absence of a father figure. Tim Burton has often demonstrated in his films a rather complicated relationship between his characters and their fathers—most likely projecting some of his own real and personal issues Burton had with his dad. While movies like Sleepy Hollow and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory were examples of the main character having a negative relationship with their father, and Big Fish was something of a requiem of respect to his father, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is more about the death of father figures, accepting the inevitability of death, and learning to move on. Had the script stuck a little closer to this core theme in its storytelling, it might not have felt so exhausting by the end, and the final act wouldn’t have felt so rushed. That being said, I have to now contradict myself by saying I tend to like the bits that have nothing to do with the central theme or Lydia’s family.

Lydia is a big disappointment in this film for me because of how she acts is inconsistent with who she was in the original. Her somewhat regressive behavior as an absent mother who is frequently stressed and hooked on pharmaceuticals is partially justified by the death of her husband, which had a tremendous impact. However, I would argue that a person like her would need to have experienced more trauma than that to make me believe she was the same character.

The Lydia from the original film, even in the most intense moments, never seems like a fearful damsel in distress. Sure, she’s shocked by things happening in the climax, but she doesn’t appear scared of Beetlejuice or the ghostly occurrences. At the end of the movie, she’s dancing through the air with a bunch of grotesque ghosts of football players who died in a bus accident behind her, and she’s got no problem with any of it. This lack of independence that was present in the teenage version of the character and transformation into a co-dependent wimp who is terrified of Beetlejuice and incapable of making decisions does not feel consistent with her original character. At one point, Delia asks her something along the lines of, “What happened to the sarcastic teenager who was always torturing me?” and I wanted to ask the same question.

Her character flaws are only exacerbated by Astrid’s antagonistic attitude towards her. Astrid is almost a surrogate for the original Lydia in this movie, but it’s worse. Unlike the young Lydia, who just quietly makes sarcastic comments about the people who annoy her, Astrid’s attitude is much more overt and unforgiving, making her seem like an ungrateful and hateful brat instead of a character for whom we’re supposed to feel sympathy. It’s for this reason that, even though the core theme of the movie is more prevalent in the relationship between Lydia and Astrid, I’d rather spend more time with Beetlejuice.

There’s something ironic about the fact that the movie has the same word twice in its title, and that it feels like it’s two separate movies smushed together into one, with how the story progresses. Lydia and all her drama are kind of their own thing, and Beetlejuice’s involvement remains tangential for a majority of the film until it comes time to conveniently wrap everything up. Beetlejuice’s side of the story involving his ex, meanwhile, feels like it’s taking place in a separate movie. His ex, Dolores, is supposed to be something of the main antagonist, but she only appears occasionally as a reminder that she’s around. She’s like a slasher villain who’s going around killing ghosts but who barely arrives in a handful of scenes throughout the whole movie. For all the buildup the film does about the inevitable encounter she will have with Beetlejuice, the way the driving conflict of the film is resolved is quick and disappointing.

How the movie manages to avoid catastrophic failure is with its performances. Catherine O’Hara and Michael Keaton steal the show and keep this bloated adventure from getting dull. Whenever Beetlejuice is around, there are jokes to be had, and a lot of them hit. Keaton may have been away from the role for 30+ years, and his voice is definitely rougher with age, but he is still great as the titular character and carries a lot of the comedy. Likewise, Catherine O’Hara as Delia manages to be the comedic force surrounding Lydia’s storyline. Delia was just the annoying eccentric artist in the first film, but she gets to be more of the sardonic comedic relief here—possibly due to O’Hara’s popularity for her character on Schitt’s Creek—and thank goodness.

If it sounds like I didn’t like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, keep in mind that my opinion is heavily impacted by how much I enjoy the original film. I think the first movie is an incredibly efficient experience that manages to establish a lot of character and world-building extremely quickly while still managing to be fun and quirky in a very Tim Burton way. This sequel tries to accomplish a lot more in a similar amount of time and does not completely hit the mark. It’s still funny and enjoyable, and it’s almost a miracle we ended up with a movie that was not a complete disaster when you consider the state of Hollywood and how this was a sequel that took decades to come out. It just happens to be a movie that I can really only enjoy once. The jokes, effects, story, and characters are not quite as timeless as the original film, and the slight alterations to Lydia for the sake of this movie’s story feel forced and unnecessary.

TL;DR

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a fun Tim Burton adventure with the return of one of his most iconic characters, albeit a slightly hollow experience. I enjoyed the humor and performances, however, there are far too many characters and subplots that complicate the story and get too conveniently resolved in the final act. In addition, some fundamental changes were made to certain characters that drastically impacted my experience, for better or worse. Considering this is a sequel to a movie that came out more than thirty years ago, it’s not a terrible time, and it’s worth a watch if you’re a fan. It just probably won’t entertain you nearly as much as the original and is not likely to be funny enough to warrant multiple viewings.

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