It is the summer of pleasing the fan base. We saw it in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. We saw it in Alien: Romulus, and as the summer of 2024 comes to a close, we’re seeing it in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Let me point out here that none of these films are bad. In fact, I quite enjoyed Alien: Romulus. The point is, however, that all of these films were written and directed with a pre-set audience in mind … and audience that was easy to win over so long as you reminded them of how much they enjoyed the original. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is so much that film I’m surprised it wasn’t written by “missing” co-stars Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, and Jeffrey Jones (all of whom are still alive, not that it matters in a film about dead people).
Thirty-six years after the original “haunting,” a grown-up Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) now hosts her own ghost-chasing cable TV dreck. During one filming, she starts having visions of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), the mildly psychotic specter that showed up in the 1980s and committed attempted marriage. Apparently, the unhinged ghoul -who is now CEO of some sort of undead firm staffed by shrunken-head people- still has a thing for the one who got away. Awwwww.
In at least one aspect, I gotta give it up for Betelgeuse. It has been 36 years and he is still gaga about Lydia.
By comparison, my own personal obsession with Winona Ryder ended right around Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael.
I digress.
Flummoxed by the spiritual cameos and saddened by the sudden death her father, Lydia returns to Winter River for a funeral where she reluctantly accepts a proposal from her slimy producer, Rory (Justin Theroux). All of this seems performative. All the film is really doing here is getting Lydia, her mother Delia (Catherine O’Hara), and daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega, an excellent pick for Lydia’s daughter given how well she embodies “Wednesday” Addams) back to their haunted house and that town model where we first meet Betelgeuse.
To make this all a bit more involved, Astrid has her own obsession with meeting her deceased father. Lydia becomes involved in a supernatural love triangle, and Betelgeuse is trying to capture Lydia while avoiding his Hellbent ex, Delores (Monica Bellucci).
The film feels a great deal like tongue-in-cheek noise. Not bad noise, per se, but irrelevant 
and unnecessary noise. The entire plot could have been avoided with one phone call. I’m sure of this. But then, we’d miss out on Betelgeuse announcing his return to the world of the living with “The Juice is loose!” (Isn’t that an OJ Simpson catch phrase? I’d chide myself for being dated on this, but the film itself gave us a literal “Soul Train” and an extended ballad of “MacArthur Park.” Both of these moments were funny, but you gotta know they aren’t being written for millennials, huh?)
And when Astrid has a crisis of her own, we get so many moving parts in the film that we lose Delores for an entire act.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a bit clunky and confusing in both intentional and non-intentional ways. I kinda like how Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder have aged 36 years, but Betelgeuse looks pretty much the same. I wonder how many Tim Burton characters that could apply to. There are enough smiles here for the uninitiated to enjoy; if you NEED NEED to love love Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, you will leave the theater satisfied. However, this film is clearly tailor-made for a pre-set audience, one that enjoyed Beetlejuice the first time in a theater.
There was once a ghost, Betelgeuse
Who had a screw or seventeen loose
But his heart didn’t waver
So he returned to favor
A romance of variety most abstruse
Rated PG-13, 105 Minutes
Director: Tim Burton
Writer: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, Seth Grahame-Smith
Genre: Did you lobe it the first time? Here, love it again.
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Fans of the original
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “Why is Monica Bellucci even in this film?”
