I posted this on Facebook earlier, but I felt like putting it here too (now with bonus content!)
Keep in mind that this is coming from someone for whom the original is a contender for “most watched movie in my life”. It’s the first movie I remember seeing in the theater (as Geena Davis pulling her face off is burned into my brain). I wasn’t a fan of the cartoon, so I don’t have that lore rattling around in my head. But to be clear–I have my biases (and I’ll attempt to be spoiler-free).
There is… there is a lot going on in this movie. Four stories are fighting for dominance in an hour forty, so none of them can get properly established. I know it’s supposed to be a comedy, so there should be lots going on at a fast pace. But at this point, Beetlejuice has become a mythology. There was potential to give the people what they wanted, but it wasn’t delivered. Like, the movie has value, but not as much value as I was hoping for. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of ways to punch up the script while I was watching.
The Monica Bellucci character could have been great. The built her up to be a Big Bad in the beginning with Danny DeVito. (BTW spot-on performance. DeVito can do no wrong, and when he dies, the world will mourn) But then she disappears from the film. She has almost no lines. We never get a sense of her present-day character. She’s just a black box that serves as a ticking clock, hunting Beetlejuice like Jason Voorhees. I get the feeling she was designed so they could have more merch in Hot Topic besides Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas and Misa from Death Note.
The stuff with Jenna Ortega’s father was glossed over. That had a lot of budding angles. Parental death is a big thing, but then you involve the afterlife, you can get really deep. Like in movies like The Book of Life and Soul and Coco and What Dreams May Come and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.
The Winona Ryder/Justin Theroux storyline is just dumb. I was scratching my head thinking “what about this character is supposed to be funny?” He’s nothing more than the fast-talking Hollywood agent type that belonged in a 90s sitcom like Full House. The character is cliché and not well-defined. You can see his “twist” coming before the movie starts. Which makes me sad that his movie wasn’t as clever or imaginative as its predecessor.
I liked the Arthur Conti/Jenna Ortega plot. But once the tension starts, it ends just as quickly. That should have been the external story while the internal story was Jenna Ortega reconciling with her mother. Maybe I have nostalgia goggles, but it’s missing that high energy gross-out comedy that existed in the eighties (like Madballs or Garbage Pail Kids). But the visuals are spot-on. The Beetlejuice character continues to be great–a little less frantic (probably due to age), but still funny and stylish like an MTV cartoon.
You know what this movie reminds me of? The Corpse Bride. It follows many of the same beats. Both center around marriages to the dead and parent relationships and exploring the afterlife and musical numbers. It’s like Tim Burton just said, “Eh, I’ll copy something else I did a long time ago to save myself work.” The gags repeat too–the “what do you think of this” scare, the Large Marge face, a wedding at the ending, a musical number.
I guess I can’t lie and say I’m not disappointed. I think the problem was there wasn’t an overarching theme. I mean, even the original Beetlejuice was about something. It was about the rise of yuppies taking pastoral rural areas and ruining them in the name of trendiness and money. That was for the adults. The spitting into the pocket was for the kids. But at least we sensed that it was all connected. The new Beetlejuice lacks that.
And then there’s the fact that nerds like me have spent 36 years wondering about the answers to all questions the first movie brought up. What is Saturn? Why does time move differently there? What are the sandworms? Do they eat ghosts? Who can see ghosts and who can’t? Does everyone become a ghost or do they eventually move on? And to where? What’s the point of Adam and Barbara distorting their faces to scare the Deetz’s if they can’t be seen?
And it’s not like they didn’t add to the lore, but they did it in a way that just adds more questions. Like Bob (and his friends). Shrunken head guy–great to see him again. But why is he now Beetlejuice’s secretary? And why are there so many of them. Did they get cloned? Why bring him back and not flat Frank? Why does Beetlejuice have a secretary? I thought he was a kind of rogue snake oil salesman? And his goal was to get back to the world of the living (a la the old “Green Card” maneuver)? The afterlife just forgave those crimes?
And I’m not asking all the questions to be answered. They answered one about where Adam and Barb went off to, though not very well. And part of the fun is that none of the rules make sense, but you at least have to either stay consistent or give us more fun rules. Hell, you can answer questions with things that invoke other questions. Take this writing tip I once found:
If you’re world building and scared that what you’re writing sounds lazy/ripped out of your ass/unrealistic, but also don’t want to do the back-breaking research to come up with a boring solution, just give the thing two layers of explanation—one to explain the specific problem and one to explain the explanation. Then it’s just “turtles all the way down”. If you’re lucky, you might find that the second question’s answer loops around to answer the first, filling the plot hole entirely. Two layers creates the illusion of infinite depth. A normal reader won’t bother to dig around for a third question.
But answers there should be. If you’re going to do a sequel, it’s the best way to give the reader/viewer a satisfying experience. And if you’re not going to do that, at least make it a good story. One story.
Conclusion: I give this one a trembling thumbs up. At least it won’t ruin the franchise, like The Neverending Story or Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull did. But they had too many ideas and went into shooting before refining them.
And the musical number went on too long.
