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After 36 years, the juice is loose in the new sequel of Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice.” Bringing back Winona Ryder’s character Lydia Deetz as an adult to deal with her trauma of Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice while attempting to try and bond with her daughter Astrid Deetz portrayed by Jenna Ortega after a death in the family.

To start off it was a good sigh of relief, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” didn’t tone itself down since nowadays a lot of movies and tv shows tend to do that out of fear of the MPA Guidelines causing them to lose money with their new rating system. For instance in the original if you look in the background you would see people who have also passed on into the afterlife and implying how they died. The 1988 “Beetlejuice” would show people with their clothes on fire signifying a burned related accident or the receptionist always smoking/having a very large cigarette implying smoking is what killed her. 

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is no different with the movie being very inventive with a funny scene showing Danny Devito’s janitor character in the afterlife making the same mistake of confusing his water with bleach in a pretty funny cameo. Then there’s Willem Dafoe in a B plot, portraying a washed up dead cop show actor who died performing one of his own stunts attempting to track down a mysterious assailant after Beetlejuice.

Another factor that worked was how they wrote out the actor for Lydia’s father since the actor Jeffrey Jones was convicted of pedophilia charges in 2010. Instead of making the audience feel uncomfortable in by giving his character a memorial, they do a stop motion scene reminiscent to the stop motion action of the original by sending off his character with a plane crash only to find out it’s not the crash that killed but a random shark that swam near the wreckage he manage to swam to after the crash.

A big twist that got a huge gasp was the reveal that Jermey, a side character Astrid meets, turned out to be a ghost who died when he fell out of his treehouse and wants Astrid to perform a ritual to bring him back to life so they can be together. Only for it to be misdirect that he’s actually a kid serial killer who wants to use Astrid as a sacrifice to resurrect his body. What made this twist work was  marketing did not use this as a way to promote the movie. 

But possibly the best part of this film was the performances. Over 30 years later and they can still embody these characters, especially newcomer Jenna Ortega who completely blew away those expectations of she’s just gonna be Wednesday 2.0 in this. She made Astrid feel like a completely different performance similar to Heath Ledger when people only associated him with being a pretty boy until his brilliant performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Same with Michael Keaton who goes to show why he was and still is the perfect choice for Beetlejuice with his perfect balance of being a scary threat to one of the funniest parts of the movie. One scene involving the antagonist Jeremy about to complete his ritual by stamping his passport to return to the mortal world only for it to be interrupted by Beetlejuice who pretends to be a security guard confusing him which got a big laugh only for it to go completely silent as Beetlejuice opened a trap door causing him to fall in a fiery pit. 

Even the sets were amazing. Leaning more on the practical side of effects really gave each scene their own specific flavor. From the sand pit world looking more realistic compared to the original looking more like a desert. And now even the spirit world looks more developed than just an office, but looks along the lines of coco’s afterlife if it was designed by the crew of nightmare before Christmas. 

As for what didn’t work, I guess it would be the character Lydia going against her beliefs. From being against when her parents wanted to use them to make their haunted house an attraction to making a quick buck off the ghost couple from first “Beetlejuice” to now having a talk show. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” turned something that made her unique, being the only character who can see the paranormal, to now it being something she markets off of doing live shows for people like she’s a supernatural Ellen Degeneres or Oprah. 

Then there’s the evil mustache twirling fiance of Lydia where you know he’s gonna be a passive aggressive jerk from the beginning. The movie’s trying to make you hate him because the movie is telling you to hate him, and you know his evil plan of “marrying Lydia to milk her of her fortune” is gonna backfire. So why use him as a plot device to drive Astrid and Lydia apart when they already have cracks in their relationship? With Lydia not being able to see her dead partner/Astrid’s father and choosing to focus more on her career as a paranormal investigator rather than being a mother to Astrid, there is already a lot to work with.

Whereas the twist with the Jeremy character worked, the twist being that Beetlejuice’s ex-wife came back for revenge didn’t. And it’s not the actress’ fault, she did an amazing job portraying a vengeful threat and has an amazing design evocative of Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s just that the movie was already way too stuffed. We had Lydia and Astrid arc of bonding after the funeral, Beetlejuice trying to complete his marriage ritual from the the original Beetlejuice, Lydia’s mother dealing with the death of her husband and moving to the otherside after an accident, stopping Jeremy from completing a ritual to switch his life with Astrid and retrieving her from the afterlife, the evil step father, and it’s just that those plots were way more interesting than what was going on. There was literally a time where we cut back to her in Beetlejuice’s office and I remembered thinking “Oh damn I forgot about you… What were you doing again?”

Overall “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is still a fun movie. Just has a couple hiccups here and there that get completely overshadowed by the cast’s amazing performances, the crew’s brilliant sets, writing, and practical effects over the abundance of CGI that is used in movies now.

 

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