The Juice is Loose: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Movie Review

NOTICE: This article contains spoilers for the movie Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, you have been warned!

Beetlejuice has made a grand return with legendary director Tim Burton’s latest release, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice! Released in theaters September 6th, the long-awaited sequel aims to capture the success of the original, whilst still adding new elements to it. As of writing, the movie has already made over $335 million USD at the box office.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice presents a familiar cast: Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice, the bio-exorcist who now runs the Afterlife Call Center, Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz, who is now a famous ghost show host, and Catherine O’Hara as Delia Deetz, Lydia’s mother. 

However, it also introduces new names to the series: Jenna Ortega as Astrid Deetz, Lydia’s daughter who struggles to believe what she has been told, Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson, the chief detective of the afterlife, Arthur Conti as Jeremy, the evil ghost, Justin Theroux as Roy, Lydia’s manager and also boyfriend, and Monica Bellucci as Delores, a soul-sucking demon. Danny DeVito even makes a short cameo!

While the movie is fun and enjoyable to watch, one watcher said, “It has too many subplots and doesn’t know what it wants to be. The plot doesn’t know if it wants to be about Astrid or Delores. Delores does almost nothing throughout the entire movie, and we learn extremely little about her as well.”

Delores was Beetlejuice’s ex-wife who was hell-bent on marrying and then killing Beetlejuice. The start of the movie sets off a great start for her character to be the main villain, and for a while she continues to be. However, soon the audience realizes that she isn’t really that relevant to the story, as way more attention is given to Astrid’s short-lived relationship with Jeremy, and the whole plot of Astrid almost dying to make him live again.

In the movie, Astrid meets Jeremy when trying to escape Lydia and her soon-to-be husband at the ghosthouse. She ends up crashing into a backyard and meeting Jeremy, who appears to be kind and into the same things she is. They start talking to each other, and agree to spend Halloween night together. However, it turns out that Jeremy is a ghost, and he had murdered his parents. He intends to use Astrid to come back to life, trying to kill her in the process.

Overall, Jeremy feels like the main antagonist of the movie despite there being ingredients for Delores & Beetlejuice himself to be even more of a threat.

It appears that Delores was nothing but a secondary character. When Delores finally appears again near the end of the movie during Beetlejuice’s second attempted wedding to Lydia, she is very easily killed by the sandworm thanks to Astrid’s quick thinking, making her just seem very weak and pointless. The movie fails to make her a real threat to the main characters.

Another case of left-behind subplots is the case of the shrunken-head workers at the Afterlife Call Center escaping into the real-world after Beetlejuice blows a hole through it. They are never mentioned again in the movie, which was confusing considering how many of them escaped.

The movie also introduces a change to Beetlejuice’s character. In the original movie, Beetlejuice is the main antagonist, always a threat and terror. He was also pretty messed up in what he tried to do: marry Lydia.

In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, he, of course, returns, however this time he shows off as more of a protagonist than an antagonist. He’s still bent on marrying Lydia, but he ends up helping her greatly in rescuing Astrid from Jeremy’s trap and voiding his contract in the process. Beetlejuice had forced Lydia to sign a contract promising to marry him if he helped her rescue Astrid from Jeremy’s plot to kill her. 

Beetlejuice does just that and saves Astrid from certain death, however he had made the contract void by breaking the afterlife’s law by bringing Lydia along with him. The movie finishes off in the church where Lydia was supposed to marry her boyfriend Roy, with Beetlejuice defeated and Delores killed easily.

Despite the sudden change, Beetlejuice still keeps his old charm and Michael Keaton’s performance proves he’s still got some of the juice left in him.

“I thought it was pretty good,” said another viewer, “I enjoyed myself a lot throughout though I’d imagine most of that came down to Keaton’s performance, but I still liked stuff when he wasn’t present on screen. The plotline with his ex wife maybe felt a little rushed but it didn’t bother me too much, and I liked the new cast of characters with Jenna Ortega and the guy (Jeremy) she meets.”

Another point of criticism are the characters themselves. Some have stated that they feel too rushed, and others say the movie focused a lot more on the newer ones than the original cast from Beetlejuice, which upset them.

“The characters just felt rushed and bland,” another said. “Some are fine, but characters like Astrid just feel like your average generic teenage girl.”

But it’s not all negative! Beetlejuice Beetlejuice excels in its clever use of practical effects, great soundtrack, and designs. It takes you right back to the vibe of the first movie. 

So while Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a true sequel to the original, it pushes aside many plotlines and rushes through character development. It is definitely a funny movie to watch and isn’t disappointing, there are just areas that could’ve been improved on. 

When compared with the original, it isn’t as great. The movie feels more of a nostalgia throwback than actually adding anything new to the series. While the plot definitely adds to the characters, such as Lydia & Beetlejuice, it does so in a way that feels artificial.

Was it worth the 36 year wait? Director Tim Burton stated, “nothing clicked and truly, it couldn’t have happened until now.” He also said that timing was everything, and making the sequel back in 1989 wouldn’t have worked.

It may have been worth leaving the juice alone on this one.