In a movie-making period overrun by studio-generated legacy sequels, remakes, and requels, it’s exhausting to not be cynical in regards to the mere existence of many of those motion pictures. Whereas a sequel to Beetlejuice had been mentioned way back to the 90s, it clearly has solely come to fruition now. With abated sequels like Ghostbusters: Afterlife treating the unique materials with a preciousness that the primary movie by no means had, it and its kin like Rogue One sacrifice story, characters, and originality on the altar of nostalgia bait and predictability. Most of those movies don’t really feel just like the distinctive imaginative and prescient of a filmmaker however the product of company committee milking its IP.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is much from an ideal movie however certainly one of its greatest attributes is that it not less than avoids falling into that nostalgia bait lure and looks like an precise sequel to the off-kilter darkish comedy of the primary movie. Largely anyway, as this film does have its share of “Do you keep in mind this?” moments. Beetlejuice does his scary face factor with tentacles, there’s a dance sequence the place individuals are taken over and somebody sings by means of them, the sand worms seem, the shrunken head males return and in bigger numbers.
However Tim Burton not less than appears to need to do one thing considerably completely different with the fabric. A lesser model of this movie would have merely replayed the plot beats of the primary movie with Jenna Ortega fulfilling the position Winona Ryder‘s Lydia did within the first movie as roles are reversed. Whereas there may be a few of that, the plot is kind of completely different in reality and there’s some completely different character dynamics, regardless of the return of Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, and naturally, Michael Keaton because the titular character.
There’s really virtually an excessive amount of different plot, because the movie turns into a jumbled mess within the center as three completely different plot threads compete with one another and many of the plot-lines resolve in a reasonably perfunctory method. As entertaining as Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe are in a plot-line involving Beetlejuice’s spouse returning to chase him down, with Dafoe taking part in an actor who performed a cop on TV in life now committing to the position within the afterlife, this finally ends up feeling fully perfunctory. Jenna Ortega manages to get tricked into giving up her life for the ghost of a teenage killer to return to life, and there’s additionally a plot-thread of Lydia’s boyfriend, performed by a splendidly quirky Justin Theroux, pressuring her to marry him. Beetlejuice is operating all through all of those varied plot threads, however none of it threads along with any grace. Some plot beats are fairly actually forgotten within the climax of the movie.
However for as overstuffed because the movie is, Burton didn’t overlook to give you new distinctive darkly comedic sequences. As talked about, newcomers like Theroux and Dafoe match the vibe of the Beetlejuice world and are extremely entertaining. The movie flexes its inventive wings with a stop-motion animation to elucidate the partial absence of Jeffrey Jones and a black-and-white sequence paying homage to Mario Bava movies to function the origin of Beetlejuice. These comedic moments assist elevate the movie and supply a few of the greatest laughs.
Burton earned a popularity early in his profession for a novel visible model, exemplified in movies like the primary Beetlejuice and this movie not less than maintains a lot of that. There are some enjoyable visible gags and the general fantastical macabre vibe works its method all through the movie. This looks like certainly one of Burton’s freshest movies in years.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has many flaws, being considerably of a story mess and missing in the identical diploma of delicate perception that the primary movie provided. However in a panorama the place sequels like this are usually creatively bankrupt slop, this one is refreshing by comparability. One can watch this and really feel prefer it really got here into being as a result of some distinctive concepts, even when not all the time well-executed, somewhat than made by advertising executives to examine market share containers.
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