Coming out 36 years after the first movie, ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ is once again directed by Tim Burton. Starring Michael Keaton, returning as the iconic character Beetlejuice, as well as Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara. It’s rare for a sequel to have all the same actors for a second movie, especially for one that came out so many years ago. That’s one thing I respect about this movie already.
One this about the Beetlejuice movies is how shockingly little Beetlejuice is them. The title character is only in the movies for a brief period, and he doesn’t show up until 45 minutes into the film. Obviously, it’s tempting to make a sequel and give people more of Beetlejuice when you know you have a character that many love and have loved for 36 years. This movie, however, has a few more minutes of screen time for Beetlejuice compared to the first. His screen time is well balanced, and his appearance liven things up considerably.
Winona Ryder was just as amazing as the first movie, it was great seeing her back in this role. It was interesting to see that there is no longer an antagonistic relationship with Catherine O’Hara’s character, who is of course the cliche artist who other artists are terrified to encounter because she is so miserable.
Lydia also has a daughter now played by Jenna Ortega, and their relationship is very strained because she doesn’t believe in the paranormal, especially when her mother is the legend of the paranormal activity, making things more difficult.
Just as there is a lot of old faces to recognize on the screen, there are also a lot of new faces. For instance Justin Theroux who plays Rory Lydia’s manager and boyfriend. He’s very creepy and off-putting purposefully in the role. Williams Dafoe is also in the afterlife (not to spoil what his character does in the movie, because a lot of the fun is in discovering what he’s doing in the afterlife). Monica Bellucci is in the film, and she has an incredible character introduction. The high of her introduction sustained me for a while, but as she began to have less and less to do for the narrative, I realized she wasn’t going to be that much of an important character, which was a bit disappointing.
One thing about ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ that I would pinpoint is that there are an overabundance of characters, and all of them are focused on for a considerable amount of time. That being said, when you look back on the movie, all of them lead back to this specific thing that needs to happen, and I thought that worked really nicely!
The movie is great looking with impeccable production, designed makeup, costumes, animatronic effects, and puppets. I was really scared it was going to be filled with lots of noticeable CGI, but I think they handled it wonderfully! There are many great people in the afterlife section of the movie that are very unique; you can look at them and know exactly how they died.
Just like the first movie it has the same creative energy to showcase people’s deaths. Even with the things that are CGI: you can tell they tried to make it look like stop motion, similar to the ’88 film. The set design and production design made me excited about spooky season. The film didn’t fall into that decade’s later sequel trap of giving whatever character the audience likes way more screen time. The directors were very careful with that.
This in no way felt like a retread of the original. ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ is a bigger world and has more characters. While it’s not quite as focused as the first movie, (it feels a tad too big, like there are almost an overabundance of characters and storylines) it does all come together in the end.
