About 25 years too late, director Tim Burton brings Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to the big screen this Friday. The question on everybody’s mind is, “Is it worth seeing?” And the answer to that is an emphatic, “No”.
For the last year and a half, I’ve sat idly and watched Hollywood push the extreme to the limit. What do I mean by that? The question isn’t “if”, it’s ‘How many F-bombs can we drop in a PG-13 movie?’ It’s not “can” we get away with nudity, it’s ‘How much nudity can we show in an R-rated movie?’ We’re just over halfway through 2024 and too many studios have dove into the occult, sorcery, and have created an odd obsession with demons. That brings me to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Death and everything that comes with it is to be expected, especially since we’re talking about Tim Burton. But it’s become obvious that he too, has fallen victim to this new-age extremism. In the film, Winona Ryder’s character Lydia warns everyone around her, and I quote, “He’s a demon!” I watched the original movie and even the cartoon, and for the past four decades the title character has been known as the self-proclaimed “Ghost with the Most.” So why was that necessary?
After a family tragedy, three generations of Deetz family members return to their home in Winter River. Lydia (Winona Ryder) is a famous psychic with a TV show and endures the daily battles of grief (the death of her husband), the anxieties that come with her job, and visions of Beetlejuice. Dealing with her imaginative mother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) who takes every advantage that comes with artistic expression, her life takes an extreme turn after being guilted into a marriage by her boss Rory (Justin Theroux) and her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) accidentally opens a portal.
Had the story stuck to just two storylines, the film would’ve been more enjoyable. Instead, they straight up Game of Thrones’d Delores (Monica Bellucci) by obliterating her arc. A scornful soul out for revenge on an ex-lover because it’s the one thing that stands between her and immortality… and she’s out of the picture within seconds? That’s seven different characters from Game of Thrones Season Eight and it’s unacceptable that nobody has learned from this yet.
Willem Dafoe is a funny actor turned detective and Michael Keaton gets his share of laughs too, but the visuals give away all the reaching that transpires. There were too many scenes to count where the camera would stay on a character’s face after quoting a ‘gotcha’ line. The awkward silence begged the question, ‘Was it funny? Did you get it?!’ The film was a perfect fit for Jenna Ortega and she shined bright with her performance as did the hilarious Justin Theroux. Catherine O’Hara had her moments too, but overall, the film felt unnecessary.
This unsought macabre flop, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice gets a 6 out of 10. The combination of Theroux, Keaton, and Ortega made this movie bearable. It was interesting that, of all the deaths, Charles Deetz’s was the most gruesome. Jeffrey Jones played the role in the first film in 1988, but later had to register as a sex offender and faced a few legal challenges since then. The film is rated PG-13 for violent content, death and bloody images, strong language, some suggestive material, and brief drug use.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will premiere in theaters on Friday, September 6.
-Jon Jones
Photos: Courtesy of Warner Bros.