Beetlejuice Beetlejuice! Our Review

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice! Our Review

Yes, yes, we played a little hooky yesterday at the writing desk and snuck off to the first showing of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel of one of our favorite childhood movies from 1998 (over 26 years ago). And yes, we bought the souvenir popcorn bucket. We're movie nerds, we can admit it. So now we are here to give our take on the sequel, since it comes with a lot of marketing and many of you will flock to see it this weekend.

Basically, it is a fun film. Will it make a lasting impression like the first? No, but that's ok. Let the first Beetlejuice live on. This is a fun follow up and it doesn't try to be anything it's not and that's why it works. It's a perfect Sunday matinee movie. First off, we want to know what plastic surgeon everyone is using because reprising their roles, Winona Rider, Catherine O'Hara, and Michael Keaton look fantastic. It is like time has stopped still for them. And they brilliantly step back into the characters without missing a beat. Newcomers Monica Belluci, Justin Theroux, and Willem Dafoe all make a nice addition. Monica Belluci is divine with almost zero dialogue. She is gorgeous and fulfills our gay diva fantasies, no doubt many drag queens will be wearing her schtick this Halloween season.

 

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The movie opens up with Winona Rider hosting her own Ghost House talk show. She has become a popular medium with our own talk show and media empire. Again, she looks fantastic and she is Lydia Deetz all over again. The story quickly runs into the death of her father. This is a great set up in many different ways. Number one, it propels the characters into dealing with death, grief, and the afterlife, but it also gives the actor who played the dad in the original Beetlejuice (Jeffrey Jones) a way out. His career has been canceled due to some unsavory criminal action.

 

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The storyline brings the family back to the original house, and with it, Beetlejuice. They explain the absence of the ghost couple (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) but their model of the town is still there, and the gateway to the underworld. Jenna Ortega joins the cast as Lydia Deetz's daughter. She is effective but bordering on being pigeon-holed as the Wednesday Addams type. Her acting could use a little stretch. Her character gets involved with a hot ghost boy (damn, he is cute), and so hijinks in the underworld ensue. There is a side story about Beetlejuice's first wife running havoc in the afterlife, and it seems disjointed for a bit until the grand finale. Look, the movie is just plain fun. There are plenty of throwbacks to the original, including the movie's opening credits as a mic of the first, there's a lip synch possession, there are the stop-motion sandworms, there's Lydia's red wedding dress, there's a redo of Day-O, it's all a great homage. The storyline is a bit of a mess. What we did like is that the sequel didn't shy away from getting a little gruesome and dark. That was a fun. The movie does get a little disjointed and silly, but that's ok. Go in for the fun and you won't be disappointed.

As far as gay, other than the hot ghost boy, there's not much there for us. The usually hot Justin Theroux is an unlikeable character and we don't get to see him in any tight pants. Visually, this movie is amazing. Tim Burton used as little CGI as possible to mimic the look of the first that works really well. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is worth a second watch to see what you missed the first time around, there's a lot to saturate and look at. Again, the storyline is a bit busy so it all gets unraveled in the end and the finale is a bet of let down. Does there need to be another sequel to make this a trilogy? Probably not. And that's ok.

Did you see Beetlejuice 2? Let us know what you thought!

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