#REVIEW: “BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE”

Review by David Baldwin for Mr. Will Wong

Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) has just returned to Wind River with her Step-Mother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) and her estranged Daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega). Lydia is still haunted by her experiences from decades past, and the rest of the family just wants to leave quickly. But when Astrid gets mixed up in a plan involving the Afterlife, Lydia is forced to turn to the absolute last person she wants to ask for help from: the obnoxious demon Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton).

That is just a taste of the chaos Director Tim Burton and company have cooked up for the long-awaited, 36 years-in-the-making sequel, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE. And for the most part, they do an impeccable job of resurrecting the demonic bio-exorcist and the people and world that revolve around him. Keaton jumps back into the character without missing a beat, and seeing him reunited with Ryder is worth the price of admission alone. Even better are the Film’s stellar visuals – the practical effects, the makeup work, the stop motion and puppet work, all of it looks spectacular and the sets feel just as tangible and real as they did before. There are some hiccups in the CGI, but it admittedly looks pretty great most of the time too.

Suffice to say, if you were worried about this Film betraying the campy look and feel of the original, you can rest easy knowing that it feels like a vintage Burton production that was crafted with care and is not a soulless cash grab of an existing IP.

That said, as much fun as it is seeing Burton playing in his macabre sandbox again with some of his most beloved muses, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE suffers from having too many subplots and too many characters. It lacks cohesion and focus for the better part of its 104-minute running time, and genuinely feels like Alfred Gough and Miles Millar’s Script was an amalgamation of four different Beetlejuice sequel ideas that ended up being smashed together. Elements are introduced and then forgotten about seconds later, characters that should be a bigger deal end up being trivial and inconsequential, and major conflicts are resolved just as rapidly as they arise. As Ryan George would say, every problem here has a solution that is “Super easy, barely an inconvenience.”

This may sound like the Film is a disappointment or that I even pretended to expect nuance or depth from a Beetlejuice sequel. On the contrary, this sequel is very much on the level of chaotic silliness its legendary predecessor and does a good job checking the nostalgic boxes you expect without overdoing it like other films of its ilk have done in the past. That may be enough for some old fans, and may be more than enough for new fans who are discovering this incredibly unique take on the Afterlife for the first time. But there are such great little nuggets of ideas on display here that could and should have been better mined and explored, rather than just be another thing thrown at the wall in the hopes that it will stick. With a more precise focus, it could have made the great performances even better and could have made a relatively enjoyable film into a truly great one.

But then again, it took nearly four decades for the Ghost with the Most to return to the big screen. And that is worth celebrating on its own, away from whether or not the Film around him lives up to any of our expectations. Here’s hoping the next one (which the title itself hints may come to pass) is developed and released a hell of a lot sooner than this one was.

Warner Bros. Pictures Canada summon BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE on Friday, September 6, 2024.