We often say on the show that time is a construct, and a prime example of that is to realize that Beetlejuice came BEFORE Batman. Sure, it’s only a year difference, but it’s also easy to believe that it was the other way around, which also amazes me thinking back to the vitriol that was out there from people (that were not me) about Michael Keaton playing Bruce Wayne given the prerequisite that you have to look at Wayne and have that feeling of “that boy ain’t quite right”. Both of those characters were played by Keaton showing “unhinged” in the right way and both in completely different ways.
Now, continuing that math, one took three years to get a sequel, while Beetlejuice Beetlejuice took THIRTY-SIX. Being talked about that entire time with several different writers and even directors (!) attached, it’s finally here. This time around, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder, who had a clause in her Stranger Things contract that if this film happened, she had to be able to go do it if the series was in production) is making a living as a TV host that seeks out ghosts for those who feel their houses are haunted. When she learns of the death of her father, she returns home to her stepmother, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), her current manager and boyfriend in Rory (Justin Theroux) and they pick up her estranged daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega) on the way. Astrid things her mother is a fraud, mainly because she claims to be able to talk to ghosts but cannot seem to commune with her father, who was also estranged from Lydia. When chaos ensues all around them, Lydia must turn to the one being she wants to avoid at all costs in Betelgeuse himself to help her while he is dealing with more chaos of his own.
OK, deep breath here… there is A LOT going on that I don’t want to get into here because there could be some spoilers involved. However, that doesn’t mean this film is good, but it also doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It just kind of “is”. My first thought after the screening I attended was that the script was simply a mess, but the further I have gotten away from it I have realized that Beetlejuice Beetejuice could have been a very well interconnected trilogy, and that rising tide would have raised all three boats. There are literally three different films that are crammed into just under one-hundred-and-five minutes that don’t even balance each other out from a pacing standpoint.
And to further my point here, I haven’t even mentioned yet that Willem Dafoe and Monica Bellucci are in this as well because their characters seem to be there just to fill in time. Their backstories are done in such an “oh yeah, we need to tell the audience why they are here” way that just had me shaking my head, and if you took them out completely this film would have had no impact either way on it. I highly doubt that there was no thought on how this film would perform to facilitate what could be at least one more in this series, but perhaps there was a concern with the principal cast returning that they just wanted to get it all out there at one time. It’s a shame because if they had just really stuck to one of the plotlines and perhaps alluded to one of the others to come back to (even in a post-credit scene that could be telegraphed within this film), Beetlejuice Beetlejuice would be a film that I would have enjoyed much more than I did. Go for the fan service and some fun performances, but set the bar low for everything else.
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