Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
SosaKnowsBall

Review by SosaKnowsBall Patron

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice 2024

★★★

Watched Sep 08, 2024

*AMC A-List Watch*
Grade: Average
Score: 58 out of 100

“The juice is loose!”

2024, officially the year of weird cinematic pregnancies. Alright I think I might get crucified for anything said here, so some disclaimers before we start. Firstly, I have not watched the first one. You can think that’s a crime or whatever but, I didn’t think it to be too necessary to understand the greater lore of this world. I will be watching and reviewing that first one soon though, as I believe it will be miles better than this. Secondly. I understand this is cult classic following, and if chances are I didn’t care to watch the first one, let alone become a fan of the franchise, that would mean I probably wouldn’t like this one. That’s completely okay in my book, not every movie will be my cup of tea, so, this will be a review more on the technical level of the product rather than the actual substance. Ready to get loose? Potential spoilers ahead.

“You're that thing from my dream.”
”Really more nightmare material.”

Anytime you’re making a legacy sequel, especially of something with such a small and dedicated community of followers, you have to be ultra-careful with the source material. From what I can gather, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a mixed bag between hard-core fans and casual viewers alike. I regretfully agree with them. That’s not to say there’s no fun here, there is plenty of stupid hijinks this cast of characters gets up to in the afterlife. The fact that nearly the entire first half the movie is spent building up to all the afterlife stuff is so tediously annoying. I would rather get a flash-bang of exposition explaining where our characters were for 20+ years or just be flat-out confused and have to research stuff later then have to sit through an hour of exposition and catching up. The pacing nearly killed the movie on arrival.

“I swear on my dead mother's soul.”

The cast is probably the best part of the entire movie but It’s not saying much. The standout performances for me were Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe, and Catherine O’Hara. It wasn’t as funny as I expected, though my girl and I had some good laughs sporadically here and there. I found it to be incredibly gross, which is on par for a Halloween movie, so points for that? The twist about the kid who killed his parents was actually pretty well done and my favorite part was the Deetz girls reuniting with Dad.

“Never seen that chick before in my life. Or afterlife.”

However, the biggest flaw with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was the way it portrayed conflicts and their resolutions. Listen, I understand this is technically a family movie, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some real stakes! Every conflict and problem introduced into the story by a character or a decision is nearly instantly resolved, dismissed, or not as important as previously thought right after. Your child is stuck in the afterlife? She’ll only be there 5 minutes. Your child accidentally gave away her life to a murderer? It’ll be resolved in 5 minutes. This batshit ex-wife has been chasing you all movie long? It’ll take 2 minutes to beat her. When you write your movie like this, don’t be surprised if people just flat out don’t care about the characters after. Also WTF to that random ass dream sequence at the end. The music was great, though, especially that last big musical number. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice might be a fun family watch for Halloween, but lacks any real depth to be a significant watch, either by itself or in the lore of its own universe.

“As Dostoevsky would say, "Later, fucker!"”

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Last Review: The Batman (2022)

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