Tim Burton is back to squeeze any remaining life out of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Squirming into theaters is the sequel to the 1988 horror comedy, and perhaps some things are better left to rest in peace...
Michael Keaton returns as the titular disgusting demon, Beetlejuice. He’s joined once again by Winona Ryder playing seer of the passed on, Lydia Deetz, and Catherine O’Hara as step-mother Delia Deetz.
Joining the franchise are Jenna Ortega (as Lydia’s daughter, Astrid), Monica Belluci, Justin Theroux, and Willem Dafoe. The Deetz family is once again sucked into the world of the afterlife in the sequel. For those fuzzy on the details of the first, don’t worry, the film will shove the bare minimum necessary information down your throat in an inelegant way.
For mega fans of the original, this will probably give enough of that dopamine fueled nostalgia hit to make it an enjoyable time at the box office. To the rest of the population — might we suggest just revisiting the original? Beetlejuice Beetlejuice somehow manages to make the sub two hour runtime feel like torture only extracted in certain circles of hell. If you aren’t the type to rewatch the first film religiously, you may find yourself mildly confused by the plot (calling it a plot often feels generous). It’s more like three incongruous storylines that get slap-dashed together at the end as if writers Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, and Seth Grahame-Smith went, “Oh yea, I guess we have to wrap this up somehow?”
Warner Bros.
Burton’s once experimental style feels like a ghostly echo of innovation past. We’re not knocking the quality of the craftsmanship, we’ve just seen it before… from Burton... many times. In many ways he’s a victim of his own success in that every Halloween since we’ve been plagued by those paying tribute to the film. Yet this latest entry almost feels like it tarnishes the creativity of past work. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels more like it was made just to pump out a new line at Hot Topic instead of the filmmakers being compelled to tell a new story.
Now the question that we at Out ask at least three times: How gay is it?! Sex pest straight. The dynamic between Lydia Deetz (who is a teenager when she first meets Beetlejuice) and the titular character is that of him trying to marry her and spending most of his time on screen in both films making indecorous insinuations. While the age difference in Keaton and Ryder is less upsetting this time around, the age difference between their characters still remains at about 600 years. This is one of those times we’re glad there is barely a drop of queerness in this film. The more we think about it, the more we want distance from it.
While there’s no denying the impact Burton’s style, and Beetlejuice in particular, have had on the cultural zeitgeist (no shade to the countless emo/goth-inspired queer legions out there), these characters clearly belong in some sort of heteronormative hell we don’t want to be trapped in.
Warner Bros.
What it boils down to is the film made nearly no effort to account for the thirty six years that have passed since the original. It was comfortable in the same style, story, and sexuality as the previous one, even though the culture has (hopefully somewhat) evolved… Which begs the question: Why even bother to revisit? There are occasional moments peppered into the film that garner a guffaw, but not nearly enough to justify the amount of recycling for the casual fan.
Because they chose to resurrect a “beloved” brand and didn’t do it justice (though, again, we suggest we revisit should the original be held in such high regard given the pest nature) and give it a 2.4 out of 5 stars. As for how many eggplants: It’s as dry and desolate as the moons of Saturn, so we give it a 0 out of 5.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is now playing in theaters.
