Movie Review: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice shows off unnecessary nostalgia
We have seen once again that nostalgia sells, Hollywood is desperate to have that success in its summer blockbusters without achieving it, and for this, it has relied on old classics, modernizing them unnecessarily and making them inclusive for a new generation, so that they know how good cinema was made at the end of the last century.
Unfortunately, we have realized that this no longer works, there is nothing that can surprise us anymore, this crisis in entertainment has not only lost millions of dollars but also viewers who have seen more interesting content on streaming platforms.
Since Michael Keaton embodied a fun character that took horror and dark fantasy comedy to another level, the creativity and originality that its director Tim Burton has had to make this whole bizarre world possible in which nothing seems to be impossible is undeniable.
36 years have passed since its premiere and now it returns to the big screens with a sequel that tries to follow in the footsteps of its predecessor with nostalgia as stale as its existence and that aims to have a vision focused on having more followers from these new generations.
What is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice about?
After an unexpected family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return to their home in Winter River, still tormented by Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) Lydia’s (Winona Ryder) life turns upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) discovers the mysterious model of the city in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife accidentally opens, with problems in both realms it is only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times and this mischievous demon returns to unleash his kind of chaos.
Yes, in this day and age, we are very familiar with this type of inherited sequel with all their nostalgic enthusiasm and how empty they can be, we could say that at first glance its director Tim Burton, and star actor Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder return to reprise their characters for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, we understood that what had to be told was already told, it was retold in a musical play on Broadway (2019 – 2020) it was continued in 4 seasons of an animated series (1989 – 1991)
We were wrong in thinking that this was over and this was a new opportunity for these old “classics” to repeat their macabre magic that managed to surprise and entertain 36 years ago but making everything new and more modern, suitable for the current world in which we live. However, for better or worse, the most “novel” thing about Beetlejuice is that it is not strictly a remake or a new version of its predecessor this is what sequels were supposed to be with big, striking changes to surpass and expand the original.
What’s loud and boisterously silly about this work is its pacing and storytelling, it’s plausible proof that Tim Burton’s imagination has no limits if left to his own devices, as an audience who wants Halloween-style fun with scares and practical jokes we doubt that even that matters to his story, given how fast-paced this film can be there are several things to consider in the development of its plot and how it links references from its predecessor with these new subplots.
Unfortunately for everyone involved during the first act, there are a lot of setups to do before getting into the action, one of these things involves the revelation that Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) has surprisingly and out of nowhere become a star, is the host of a supernatural talk show called Ghost House (any resemblance to Late Night with the Devil is purely coincidental) doing what once caused her serious problems and consequences when her parents tried to profit off of ghosts and the supernatural, it is evident that she is not happy as her producer and possible fiancé Rory (Justin Theroux) pressures her and promotes her more towards the commercial which helps in large part to distance herself more and more from her rebellious teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega).
After her stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) informs her of her father’s death, these three generations of women are forced to gather for the funeral during Halloween week. The central ghostly characters of the first film, the Maitlands (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis), are inexplicably no longer back, something that would have been a great point in favor of the film; in fact, they are not even mentioned.
Understandably, Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis can’t return to play these adorable and charismatic ghosts they played so many years ago. Their script fails to find something strong and credible enough to replace that of this couple to adapt to the conditions of the same, conveniently for the writers the few qualities that this sequel has do not reside in what they can or cannot improvise but in the way in which they are developing it and using as a pretext that Burton’s madness is like that, a place without law and without rules where everything can be done and undone at will and in the service of a script that does not escape from being mediocre and trite.
Along with the above, several subplots are more interesting than the story, but when it comes to applying the main essence of the film, it reveals itself and confuses itself. We immediately realize how poorly crafted the script by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar is, something that bases its effectiveness on nostalgia and on something we have seen before. The narrative is straightforward. It is about three generations of women who face different stages of grief and the relationship they have had with death and their world. All of this is forced by superfluous things and half-formed ideas.
For example, the movie star turned detective played by Willem Dafoe is completely unnecessary and could be eliminated without the film losing its rhythm. It could have used more of its time to clarify and develop the new stage of Lydia’s character, an element of the first Beetlejuice that unfortunately is not taken into account here, it is the emotional anchor of a macabre and sinister normality of Adam and Barbara Maitland that countered the madness and chaos of everyone else in 1988.
The romantic moment comes with the love story between Astrid and Jeremy (Arthur Conti) this inopportune teenage romance evokes sensations driven by jokes, music, shared stories, and jokes that could well have been told separately in another work that detail things more but we would be falling into copying, in that we already saw this told in another way in the television series Wednesday even the character of Astrid reminds us of the essence of this other one.
All of this is a work that prides itself on being imperfect. The film suffers from major flaws such as its obvious narrative irregularity that is present in most of Burton’s modern films, but the creativity and ingenuity of its director seem to have had a necessary rebirth. Almost all the scenes have that peculiar visual style that characterizes the type of cinema of the person who directs it. The emphasis on returning to stop-motion effects and the most artisanal and manual visual camera tricks is its strongest point. It is in these moments that it feels more like a sequel.
Beetlejuice relies on and abuses jokes too much in almost every frame they make fun of everything where some work well and others don’t, the overload of all this serves more to interrupt than to amuse and entertain, ideas that could have been good and that are not expanded or exploited as they should be to continue enriching, we have seen this comfort zone before along with its essential moral discourse that empowers women more in the manner of a modern joke, the importance of the family is present once again and that everything can be achieved if you have the will to do it, concepts that have already been told to us in a thousand and one ways until we are tired and that very rarely work and this is not the case.
The same can be said about the references that are a copy and recreation in some cases of random and endearing details that desperately plead for nostalgia, Burton uses Beetlejuice’s memories of his marriage to Delores (Monica Bellucci) as an excuse to pay homage to the black and white Italian horror cinema of Italian film director Mario Bava, this supposed villain with an appearance typical of the style that Burton has used in Catwoman from Batman Returns (1992) and in Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) a reinvention of the modern Prometheus’ girlfriend that contributes absolutely nothing to the plot, the death scene of a main character is told in a shocking and sinister way but cleverly done with the use of stop motion animation, it is disappointing that none of these elements complement each other and each one has its rhythm, as if they were completely different things.
At the end of the film is when Beetlejuice inevitably returns to reproduce all the successes of the original film making this a whole show together with the desire to please and entertain both friends and strangers in a nonsense that is just plain fun, it is pretentious to think that a new saga could emerge from this that leads these characters to tell new stories, it is stretching the gum on the other hand with the hope that it works leaving an open ending.
The production design of this supernatural underworld is dazzling, dark, sinister, and exquisitely creepy just as we saw it in the 1988 film, and despite being able to use all these modern techniques in CGI and special effects the film goes more for the side of maintaining a simple and artisanal look, the makeup and costumes do their thing and in the same way, it works with everything we see, everything is taken care of down to the smallest detail emphasizing that almost 4 decades have passed.
The cast is made up of Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Willem Dafoe, Danny DeVito, Jeffrey Jones, and Monica Bellucci, each having fun in their way, each contributing what is needed and a little more to their performances and character development, a party for adults where the plot fell short as well as the dialogues and their respective jokes, great actors for a film that should have given more of itself.
The music composed by Danny Elfman does not surprise us, the chords and the pieces are a modernization of what we had heard before, something that musically does not sound like a sequel but rather like the laziness of making new material that has its personality and that keeps up with the modernity that it claims to have, a weak work that is not up to what is expected, the songs are a separate point, the new version of Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) was essential, Donna Summer, Bee Gees and Richard Marx also participate.
In conclusion, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is far from being a classic film that the new generations of gothic teenagers can appreciate it is not even a good film, it very forcefully fulfills its role of entertainment and achieves this thanks to the duo that Burton and Keaton make, the rest is unnecessary.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is already in theaters across the country.
