As a casual enjoyer of the original Beetlejuice and avid fan of all things Michael Keaton, I went into “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” with relatively high hopes. After all, it’s been over three decades since the original film became a cult classic with its quirky blend of macabre humor and offbeat charm. That’s plenty of time to plan a stellar sequel and let expectations build.
Unfortunately, instead of the bizarre, riotous fun from the first installment, I got what can only be described as 144 minutes of vaguely spooky characters reminiscing about how good the first Beetlejuice was. Seriously, they spend most of the movie just explaining what happened in the first movie, and the original elements of the second are nothing to write home about. If Beetlejuice was lightning in a bottle, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is more like a wet match that can’t even manage a spark.
From the onset, it’s painfully obvious that there was no clear vision for this sequel other than, “Hey look! It’s Jenna Ortega!” It felt like the production team halfway filled a whiteboard with ideas, and then a timer went off, and they decided to whip out their cameras and start improvising the rest. The result was a so-called “plot” that was vague and underdeveloped. Recounting it feels less like spoiling a film and more like telling someone about a Beetlejuice-themed dream you had.
This next point is unrelated to the plot issues, but I have to say it absolutely drives me up the wall when a character who was originally a child keeps the same haircut for decades upon decades. It’s Winona Ryder. We would’ve recognized her without spiky bangs.
The first 30 minutes are essentially a character roll call as everyone from the original is either reintroduced or lazily written out of the movie. Jefferey Jones’ character from the first movie, for example, was excluded from featuring because the actor is currently behind bars for reasons that I better not mention in a light-hearted review.
None of these reintroductions serve a purpose beyond saying, “Hey, remember these people? I bet you do!” Nothing is actually happening aside from some half-hearted nostalgia-bating. The characters are simply present and accounted for, looking vaguely like themselves, except the actors are 30 years older with more wrinkles and dumber agents.
The attempts at being a plot are modest at best but are essentially a copy and paste of the first film with the titular character’s motives being unchanged. The “plot” never really gets off the ground. The story hobbles along in such a disjointed, undercooked way that it feels like they were writing the script scene by scene, letting the actors improvise and then stopping every so often to go, “Wait, where were we going with this again? Oh, that’s right, it was nowhere!”
While on the subject of endless, mind-numbing exposition, I feel obliged to tell you that almost every other line is an explanation for something that either doesn’t need explaining or makes no sense. They keep throwing new rules and backstories at you as if they’re trying to trick you into thinking the movie is moving forward when, in reality, it’s just spinning its wheels in the same bog of incoherence for the entire runtime.
Even Beetlejuice himself—arguably the movie’s biggest selling point—is reduced to a shadow of his former self. Michael Keaton gives it his best shot, but even his chaotic energy and affable charm can’t save him from the script that forgot to give him anything interesting to do. He pops up here and there, cracks a few jokes that don’t land, and then disappears for long stretches of time while the movie meanders through scenes that feel half-baked and unnecessary. For a movie called “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”, there’s surprisingly little Beetlejuice in it. For the sake of accuracy, it really should’ve been called “The Jenna Ortega Halloween Special.”
The final act just kind of stumbles to a close, wrapping up a story that never really started. There’s no big payoff to the subplots they set up, no tying up of the copious loose ends they created, and ultimately no justification why this shameless cash-grab of a movie had to be made. The big showdown, if you can even call it that, is quick, unexciting, and painfully anticlimactic.
In conclusion, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” feels like a hollow, soulless attempt to recapture the magic of its predecessor. It’s a movie that should have been weird, wild, and fun, but instead, it’s bogged down by heartless characters and sloppy storytelling. I’d advise everyone reading to avoid saying the title character’s name thrice in a row. This way, God willing, we might be spared a third Beetlejuice movie.
Gabi Merchen is a fourth-year communication major at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.
