Yesterday I returned to the movies to catch Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024), the sequel to Tim Burton’s oddball Beetlejuice (1988), a long thirty-six years later.  I am not a huge fan of the original film, although I do appreciate its originality and its rather bleak depiction of an afterlife that consists of a tedious bureaucracy.  The idea that we go to the DMV when we shed this mortal coil is a fairly convincing depiction of Hell—or, perhaps less blasphemously, limbo.

Regardless, I’d heard good things about the sequel from friends and YouTube film reviewers, so I figured I would give it a shot.  The buzz was that the sequel is not merely a shameless cash grab based on an established, beloved IP, but was actually a good movie in its own right.  Also, all of my weird friends have seen it, and one must keep up with the Joneses, as it were.

Well, the flick lived up to the hype.  Indeed, I enjoyed it more than I did the original film, which is probably the second bit of blasphemy in this review.  I’ve always found the tone of the Beetlejuice to be off, in the sense that I could never tell how much the title character is supposed to be a villain and how much a hero.  My confusion, perhaps, comes from watching the cartoon version as a kid, in which Beetlejuice is more of a friendly ghost pal to Lydia, rather than a weird pervert trying to marry a teenaged Winona Ryder.

Also, as I realized watching the sequel, Beetlejuice is a pretty bad dude, but like most demons (that is essentially how he functions), he’ll do something for you give him something he wants in return—and with terrible unintended consequences.

Additionally, Michael Keaton’s performance as The Ghost with the Most in the sequel is just better—again, blasphemy!  But in the first flick, the whole schtick seemed overdone to the point of annoyance.  Yes, Beetlejuice is supposed to be annoying—it’s his job to be annoying—but the constant muttering and stammering got distracting.  There is too much of a good thing.  In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, The Big B gets a bit less screen time, and the performance is much more coherent.  He’s not just constantly riffing and muttering, so his one-liners and jokes are way funnier.

The real shining light in the sequel is Catherine O’Hara, reprising her role as conceptual artist Delia Deetz.  Her character has grown more mature, and while she’s still a train wreck, she’s more bearable than in the original.  O’Hara brings strong comedic chops and serves as something as the voice of scatterbrained wisdom in the film.  For fans of the series Schitt’s Creek, her portrayal of Delia is in the same vein as Moira Rose—the fashionable wife of a wealthy businessman who is trying to hold onto fame and relevance.  I found myself laughing the most at Beetlejuice’s inappropriate quips, but O’Hara’s Delia was a close second.

Winona Ryder delivered a weaker performance; there were times where it felt like she reading off a cue card.  But her scenes with her daughter, Astrid Deetz (portrayed by the current goth-adjacent “it” girl Jenna Ortega) were touching and well-performed.  Ryder still manages to maintain some of that Gen X manic pixie dream girl appeal, although she’s certainly seen better days.  Her character Lydia is in an unhappy and co-dependent relationship with an overbearing and oily television producer (played by Justin Theroux, complete with jerkwad ponytail), which seems like an appropriate development, as she managed to avoid something similar with Beetlejuice in the first film.

Jenna Ortega as Astrid gave a normal performance.  I like Ortega—she reminds me of the Aubrey Plaza for the 2020s—but I wasn’t blown away by her performance here.  I suspect her casting was due in part to her success portraying Wednesday Addams, and that she strikes the appropriately “disaffected goth chick” vibe necessary to take the place of Lydia Deetz symbolically in the franchise.

The movie retained much of the practical effects look of the original, even though I think many of the “practical” effects were actually computer-generated facsimiles rendered to look like practical effects (especially Bob and the other zombies with shrunken heads).  That said, I am 99% certain that the overhead shots of the town at the opening and other points of the film were miniature models, which I absolutely loved.

The movie is fun and features a plot original enough not just to be “Beetlejuice but bigger.”  Indeed, Beetlejuice shows up less in this film, and I think that actually enhances his character substantially.

Definitely give this one a watch, especially if you’re a fan of the original.