Bullsh*tjuice Bullsh*tjuice
What do I have to say three times to keep you from seeing this garbage?
Have you ever sat in a movie and somehow just known, deep down in your gut, that it would be terrible as soon as it began? And I mean as soon as it began - like, during the opening credits?
I find that I can only ever have this experience with movies I’m earnestly either excited about or at least pulling for in advance. Like, my stomach didn’t drop at the beginning of Madame Web, because I always knew that movie was going to be garbage.
I suspected Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was going to be bad. For one thing, once-visionary director Tim Burton hasn’t made a movie I’ve enjoyed since the ‘90s (I’d be open to giving Big Fish another shot, but even that came out 21 years ago). For another thing, with a handful of notable exceptions, “legacy sequels” (i.e., sequels to decades-old classics) are usually pretty bad: for every Blade Runner 2049, Top Gun: Maverick, or Creed, there’s a Live Free or Die Hard, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, or The Matrix Resurrections.
But I really, truly, did not know HOW bad Beetlejuice Beetlejuice would be until it started.
Beetlejuice famously opens with a slowed-down, eerie sample of Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat (Day-O);” the equivalent song in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is Richard Harris’ “MacArthur Park,” except “MacArthur Park” doesn’t sound creepy when you slow it down. So the vibe is immediately… off. And not “off” in a good way, like how Pee Wee’s Big Adventure is “off.” I mean off like it simply didn’t feel correct. I mean off like watching a tribute band. I mean off like leaving the house having accidentally slipped on one shoe from each of two different pairs.
By the end of the first scene, I was ready to give up. But I didn’t give up, and I feel I should be awarded some kind of medal for that. Write your congressperson.
The protagonists of Beetlejuice are the Maitlands (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis), a recently deceased couple who find themselves trapped in their home with a big city family, the Deetzes, who they can’t stand. It’s hard to explain how a ghost would age, put on weight, and get work done, though, so the Maitlands are explained away with a quick line of dialogue in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Instead, the story concentrates on those darn Deetzes. The plot is so convoluted that it’s hard to sum it up in a few sentences, but the short version is: Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), her boyfriend, Rory (Justin Theroux, her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), and her stepmother, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), are all reunited after Lydia’s father is eaten by a shark1. Via a plot contrivance I won’t give away here, Astrid finds herself wrongfully whisked away to the afterlife, thus leaving Lydia no choice but to enlist the help of the spectre who once tried to sexually assault her, Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton - I guess being “the ghost with the most” means you’re allowed to age). But Beetlejuice also has problems of his own, in the form of a succubus ex-wife (Monica Belluci) seeking revenge.
Everything in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is perfunctory, and the script, by Wednesday’s Alfred Gough & Miles Millar (who share a “story by” credit with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter writer Seth Grahame-Smith), always emphasizes plot over character or story.
For example: Lydia has grown up to host a television show2 on which she communicates with the dead. But there’s one very specific dead person with whom she cannot communicate: Astrid’s late father (Santiago Cabrera). This is at least part of the reason Lydia’s relationship with Astrid is strained, and you’d think it was going to have some meaningful story resolution. But it doesn’t. The only reason Lydia can’t talk to her late husband is because if she could, she wouldn’t have to call Beetlejuice after Astrid is taken.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is overloaded with that sort of patronizing stupidity. Lydia still dresses exactly the way she did 36 years ago, because how the fuck else would the dummies in the audience recognize her if she had matured and changed over the decades like a real human? Someone in marketing decided Beetlejuice needs cute Minions of his own, so he gets a bunch of silent guys with voodoo-shrunken heads, including one named Bob (which could be a coincidence but probably isn’t). Once the part of the movie where everyone is running around the underworld starts, they have to figure out a way to get Delia there, too, lest Ms. O’Hara ostensibly disappear for a long stretch of time; the way they figure out how to do this isn’t an example of bending-over-backward so much as it’s an example of just throwing up your hands and saying “Good enough I guess.” There is not a single obstacle in the film which requires even the slightest effort from the characters to overcome; every conflict is with resolved with the snap of a finger. Everything is so rushed that if you listen closely, you can probably hear Burton’s ride home from set pull-up in the background.
That makes me feel bad for Keaton and O’Hara, who both seem to have earnestly put effort into their performances; Beetlejuice is so obsessed with Lydia, but I spent the whole movie wishing he’d just hook up with Delia instead.
I don’t feel bad for the rest of the cast. Theroux now specializes in playing faux-sensitive jerks, so Rory doesn’t feel like much of a challenge for him. The nicest thing I can say about Ryder, Ortega, and Belluci is that they are in the movie. Willem Dafoe shows up as a dead actor who has become a kind of afterlife detective, and I honestly forgot he was even in the movie until just this very second. And he’s Willem fucking Dafoe! One of the all-time greats! This may not be the absolute worst movie he’s ever been in (hello, Speed 2: Cruise Control), but it’s close.
Y’know how much I hated this movie? It has an extended homage to the great Mario Bava, who is explicitly name-dropped…
…and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice STILL sucks. Beetlejuice remains iconic, but the sequel is about as much fun as being consumed by a sandworm.
Jeffrey Jones, who played Lydia’s dad in the original, has not been invited back for the sequel, for obvious reasons… but they use Jones’ likeness so much, including in a lengthy animated sequence, that I’d be surprised if they didn’t have to pay him; so his absence is really more about making the audience feel comfortable than making a sound ethical decision.
Her show, by the way, cops both the name and logo of Sam Raimi’s production company. Burton infamously beat out Raimi for the Batman directing gig in 1989; I don’t think he meant to salt the wound here, but he kinda did anyway.