Kian Henderson-Cowley’s review published on Letterboxd:
Twice the title, half the juice in its bubbling spark. It’s not that Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice was an abject disappointment or anything, just unfulfilling in what it ploughs through at a ramming pace as a sequel. There’s a number of 2024 releases I’m not smitten with compared to many of you, and I’m sad to say this is another feather in 2024’s cap of “eh, that was alright, whatcha gonna do”!
Is Tim Burton back? Well… Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice isn’t actually a solid judgement call to make on that question. There are moments harkening back to classic Burton, such as the soul train gag and doubling the killing streak of the original, which verged his new film on a nonstop riot that didn’t quite happen. There were some great laughs to be had in those select scenes, yet I was waiting for the reappearance of that divine inspiration that encircled his early career. Waiting because of Burton seemingly being very passionate to revisit the world of one of his most personally significant characters (Lydia). It didn’t arrive. Where this vastly extends what were Beetlejuice’s spurts of energised insanity, you’d like to think Burton would be knocking on that untapped potential in his macabre concepts to sweep us up in, but the events here are almost too modest to attract me to more of the same. Just a little familiar and flatter.
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice doesn’t burden itself with the legacy sequel quota thank God, however in its commitment to darkening the existences of these characters as what felt to me like them in midlife crisis mode, it buckles under the weight of eyeing up too many details to flesh out. A Beetlejuice movie doesn’t have to ground itself in perfectly fluid A and B plots of course, except Tim Burton is portraying them dourer than usual and as a narrative to take more seriously. That’s where the crossfire begins. What he’s acknowledging about his creative outlook with Lydia and Justin Theroux’s new age charlatan producer, commodifying your talent into a limiting brand, clears the Elephant from the room and adds a bit of a meta flair for now. That’s definitely organic introspection uncommon for these legacy movies. Forgiving how one can lose touch with themselves, regaining some of their artistic poise by confronting supernatural trauma etc., it’s good stuff until the rest of the plot factors in.
Deaths in the family, continued rifts in parent-child relationships, marriages gone up the creek, cheating death and bureaucracy as a movie star’s wheelhouse are a few of the subplots rushing for screen time. Woah Tim hit the breaks there a minute! I see no problem in throwing these ideas at the wall like the titular character would, the trouble is most of them are heavier next to the first film’s single layer of sadness. It’s impossible to adeptly cram them all in here, and Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice then becomes an odd case of a retread the longer it goes on. Once we’re at the climax, the movie falls into what we’ve anticipated it will do, not what we want it to sidestep and try anew. This has a good heart that’s very messy, and while not in the experimental league of its predecessor, beats along strong enough in the light of what Jenna Ortega and Winona Ryder are bringing to filling the missing areas of their characters’ lives back up.
Overall Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice is a decently cooked followup, without the secret sauce that made Tim Burton’s best movies an emotionally riveting kind of fantastical gourmet. Michael Keaton’s still the top brass of unhinged, scabby performances, Catherine O’Hara’s even better at Delia’s pretentious neurosis nowadays, and the practical production designs are as robustly topsy-turvy as they’ve ever been. If only the film’s juice wasn’t overly pulped into the superfluous gaggle of subplots keeping the fresh inventiveness I wanted, and didn’t get to see much of, at bay. That ending stinger’s a corker though!
I can see why this is well-liked, it just missed too many marks for me when I’m not a Beetlejuice diehard to begin with. Beetlejuice may not have gone Hawaiian, but Charles Deetz almost got there.
Thanks for tagging along :)
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