Movie Review: 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' Starring Michael Keaton

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

Directed by Tim Burton

Written by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar

Starring Jenna Ortega, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara

Release Date September 6th, 2024

Published September 6th, 2024

A better title for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice would be Beetlejuice 2: Fulfilling Our Contractual Obligations. Or, even better, Beetlejuice 2: HERE! Now, Stop Asking Us to Make a Sequel to Beetlejuice. This sequel to 1988’s beloved horror comedy classic has the stink of a script that’s been sitting in a box in someone's attic for 30 years. Once contracts were signed, screenwriter's Miles Millar and Alfred Gough simply blew the dust off of it, tacked on a character to be played by "insert popular young actress here;” and gave it to Tim ‘where’s my check’ Burton to halfheartedly turn it into a movie.

My thesis statement on why Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels like a movie made at gunpoint from a script barely revised in the past 30 years comes in the form of jokes referencing the Disco era TV show Soul Train and the use of the 1978 Donna Summer hit MacArthur Park in a key moment of the final act. These references might have played in a Beetlejuice sequel written and released in 1991 but in a sequel released in 2024, these relics of the 1970s are going to baffle modern audiences. It’s clear from these gags that no one in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice bothered to make the movie even remotely relevant to a modern audience. That simply would have been too much work.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice picks up the story of Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) as she has settled into the life of a B-list celebrity ghost hunter. Lydia hosts a ghost encounters TV show produced by her boyfriend and manager, Rory (Justin Theroux), a touchy-feely, new age-y weasel with a ponytail straight out of a 90s movie. Lydia is miserable having lost her beloved husband years earlier to an accident in the Amazon and with him, having lost her connection to their daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega) who resents the fact that her mom can allegedly talk to dead people but cannot help Astrid talk to her late father.

Lydia and Astrid, with Rory in tow, are soon thrown together in Lydia’s former hometown when Lydia’s dad dies. The less said about actor Jeffrey Jones the better, but ewww, his face appears way too much in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Meanwhile, Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin’s Adam and Barbara are unceremoniously written off with a single throwaway line. Regardless, the death of Lydia’s father is merely an excuse to reunite Lydia with her stepmom, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), and to get them both back to the house from the first film where Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) is waiting for them.

In the underworld/afterlife, whatever place where Beetlejuice has been biding his time, an accident has awakened a dangerous demon. Delores (Monica Bellucci) is Beetlejuice’s ex-wife whom he murdered with an ax several centuries ago. Brought back to life, Delores is eager for vengeance against her beloved ex-husband. Delores has the ability to kill dead people by sucking out their souls. But, don’t worry about that, she’s barely a character and has little to no bearing on what little plot there is in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

What little plot there is settles around Astrid meeting a boy named Jeremy (Arthur Conti) who wants her to help him enter the realm of the dead. He happens to have a copy of the book “A Guide for the Recently Deceased,” and he promises Astrid the chance to see her dead dad if she helps him get to the other side. She agrees but he has a dark secret that could trap Astrid among the dead. When Lydia finds out what Astrid and Jeremy are up to, she’s forced to call on Beetlejuice to help her rescue her daughter and in exchange, Lydia promises to marry Beetlejuice.

Poor Winona Ryder, this sequel did her dirty. The makers of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice took the character of Lydia and turned her into a pill-popping loser. Despite finding herself at the end of the original film and beginning to lighten up a little, here she regressed back to being mopey and grim. She’s taken in by the obnoxious Rory simply because she’s given up on living. You might think that this has to do with losing her husband, Astrid’s father, but no. A throwaway bit of dialogue tells us that Lydia and the dad divorced years before he disappeared and died. No, the reason for the failed character reset is simply lazy screenwriting.

You can see it as well in Winona Ryder’s performance in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Ryder knows that she's an afterthought whose job is to hand the franchise over to Jenna Ortega. The movie does nothing to dismiss the notion that Ryder is over the hill, from a Hollywood perspective, and that this is a blatant bid to give this franchise over to Ortega who doesn’t appear all that interested in taking it. Ortega’s performance is little more than a series of costumes and a bad attitude. She also has remarkably few scenes with Beetlejuice, and none where the two characters spend time together one on one.

Speaking of Beetlejuice, Michael Keaton remains spry after all these years. It’s telling however, that I am only at the very end of this review taking time to talk about the man who plays the title character. Keaton still looks the part and he’s the only actor who appears fully engaged in the movie. The rest of the cast struggles with the lack of a good plot and having to make sure fans see something they recognize from the original Beetlejuice so the audience can get that sweet dopamine hit from recognizing something familiar from the thing they liked. Did you like Death’s Waiting Room from the first movie? That’s here. How about the shrunken head guy? How about an entire room full of shrunken head guys?

It’s all so uninspired. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the latest example of what I call a ‘Microwave Movie.’ The concept is simple, Hollywood executives take a nostalgic property, slop it into a bowl, stir in one new ingredient, at most, and shove it in a microwave for reheating. Then they serve it to audiences while pretending it’s a brand new gourmet meal. I feel like Gordon Ramsey should review these movies on a show called Hell’s Hollywood Kitchen. He can go behind the scenes and yell at executives for serving products that have been festering on freezer shelves for years.

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