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.
The Portly Politico 