I mean that in the nicest way possible, in case you’re wondering.
The Summary
Following text is review of the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) movie which dives into the success of the first movie alongside its sequel, reviews the characters, ponders about the questions formed in the original and discusses the impact of new characters.
It also touches upon the cartoon world of Beetlejuice, the sequel music and dips into the current success of the movie in its early days. And the music is not forgotten, delivering an heir to the Day-O sequence in Beetlejuice (1988), this time from he mind of Beetlejuice himself.
Tim Burton, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara are back to tell the story over thirty years later and introduce new characters played by Jenna Ortega, Monica Belluci, Justin Theroux, William Dafoe and Bob <3.
The Introduction
I’ll be honest with you, I’m mad about the MacArthur Park song by Richard Harris and the “musical” ending of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. After having watched the sequel on the opening Friday, I played it for days in my car and also changed my ringtone and notification sounds.
Don’t ask me how many times I watched the original 1988 movie.
Beware of spoilers incoming if you haven’t watched the sequel.
Beetlejuice is a World of its Own
My first encounter with Beetlejuice was in the early nineties and I was probably too young to watch it by today’s rating system. It’s entirely possible this was again on behalf of this author’s brother whose viewing of different movies allowed me to step into the world of Beetlejuice very early on. 10/10 for great brother.
Yes, this includes the lovable cartoon Beetlejuice which helped harbour an unnatural support for the pairing of Lydia and Beetlejuice where the two have a very different relationship. It’s Tim Burton’s fault, all that, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I don’t remember the first time I watched the 1988 movie, just that it was always there, part of my life. I own a copy of the movie and have probably seen it two to three times a year for more than half of my life. I even watched it a couple of weeks ago before going to the cinema even though I know the plot and all the lines by heart.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
Majority of the reviews for the sequel and articles prior to its release were very positive.
The trailers coming out in the previous months have very inviting. There is always a sense of fear when it comes to sequels, as we wonder how it will relate to prequel, and will it ruin the experience we had with the original…
My fears and wonder were quickly cast aside after watching this movie.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is every bit goofy, wacky, with just enough Beetlejuice time that it feels like he’s everything when the story is once again driven by Lydia, Delia and Astrid. I recently learned that Michael Keaton was in the original movie for 17 minutes and only wore the iconic black and white suit for two minutes.
Let’s be real, it feels like he and his iconic suit are in it for much longer.
According to some articles, Michael Keaton had the request to limit Beetlejuice’s time in the sequel as well, but he’s so well distributed throughout the film that it feels much longer. I guess this is the magic, where limited screen time provides a lot more impact.
I also loved seeing other familiar characters and being given closure for others.
Characters from the Original
We know by now that Barbara and Adam Maitland are not in this movie.
Geena Davis is probably right in saying that ghosts don’t age, but it was lovely to hear that they were given a good send off, rather than leaving them stuck in their old house when everyone else moved on with their lives. Even Charles Deetz was given space despite it being known early on that his actor Jeffrey Jones would not return.
Growing up, I loved both Lydia and Delia.
Ever since watching Catherine O’Hara as Delia and Kate McCallister in the Home Alone movies, I have been a big fan of her work. Seeing her on screen in other roles makes me nostalgic for her Delia role, which felt remarkable to me.
She was the main reason when I picked up Schitt’s Creek to watch.
Lydia, played splendidly by Winona Ryder, was a dream in her goth rebellious, always wearing black and hanging out with dead people who most usually won’t see. I loved every second of her screen time in the original.
Cartoon Lydia was great too but some of the outfits from the cartoon, I did wish Lydia had worn in the movie because she would have loo.
Cartoon Dynamics
If you’ve ever watched the cartoon titled Beetlejuice, there are no Maitlands in this.
Lydia and BJ are best friends and have adventures. We see different characters throughout the cartoon, including Mr. and Mrs. Juice (his parents). As iconic as the movie Beetlejuice was, I do believe the carton played a crucial role in my affection for the Ghost with the Most and the dynamic between the two is far nicer.
Beetlejuice is the villain of the first movie, yet his cartoon counterpart is very lovable and it’s very clear that there is a close bond between the two.
Cartoon BJ meets On-Screen Trickster?
Let’s consider something for a moment.
In the original movie, Beetlejuice needed a ticket out and he saw Lydia Deetz as that ticket. If he married a human, he wouldn’t be stuck to his name being called anymore.
Realistically, her age being an issue, she is the only single main character.
The plan is simple enough. Lydia is his only option.
Fast forward thirty-plus years after this failed plan, and Beetlejuice has a new job where he most likely excels due to his bio-exercising self-proclaimed title. It has been more than three decades since his failed attempt, and he has probably haunted a lot of other people and lent his services to other ghosts in other houses.
He must have encountered other single women he could have tricked.
So, how come he has a picture of Lydia on his desk and is still actively thinking of her?
Why this one girl, woman now, still has a presence for the “heartless” ghost?
It’s my belief there is a bit of a crossover between the original movie and the cartoon BJ where there is some connection between the two after all these years. Lydia still sees him, which may as well be Beetlejuice trying to communicate with her in his own way.
Can we consider this to be a sick and twisted obsession? Oh, absolutely.
Should Beetlejuice get his way in the sequel? No, he’s still villainous in his actions and Lydia is repulsed by him after all this time and finally does stand up for herself by the end of the movie.
Just to be perfectly clear here – Beetlejuice gets called a lot of names, including trickster demon, but he does deliver on the promises he makes to Lydia. He saved Adam and Barbara from being exorcised in the first movie and he saved Astrid from dying by stopping Jeremy of completing the bureaucratic aspect of his plan.
Not only that but he includes a free one in when (in his attempt to get rid of Lydia’s boyfriend) injects him with a truth serum and Lydia learns what a horrible man is Rory.
Monica Belluci as his Ex-Wife
This movie includes his ex-wife which the movie reveals he did marry her while alive and was poisoned by her as she wanted to steal his soul. He ended up chopping her into pieces as her scene of stapling herself together.
It pays tribute to the original movie when Beetlejuice pull out a finger with a ring, claims “she meant nothing to me,babe” and even has a monologue about only ever having planned to marry once.
The scene is complete, with the ring finger being the last thing Delores attaches back.
Monica Bellucci is brilliant and nothing short of gorgeous in her grotesque way.
Some argue she was pointless in the movie as she spends the entirety of it looking for Beetlejuice (are we finally admitting this is his human name??) and sucking souls out of the dead cast (including a Danny DeVito cameo and poor Bob who deserved better).
Her interaction with Beetlejuice is very short.
Beetlejuice distracts her with Rory wearing a “I heart Delores” T-shirt as he tries pawn off the human off to her before Astrid summons a sandworm to get rid of them both.
Beetlejuice’s Backstory
She may be viewed as a villain in the story, someone even Beetlejuice himself is afraid of but her story arc gives us the background only teased about in the original 1988 when Adam asks him what his qualifications are, he runs his mouth about Julliard, Harvard School of Business school and having a great time during the black plague.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been curious which of those statements are actually true and we finally got a an answer in both storytelling (his story is given with a dubbed Italian over Michael Keaton actually talking in English and it’s frankly, one of the funnier bits of the movie as it is in Beetlejuice’s nature to mess around at all times).
Astrid Deetz
I’ve heard both good and bad review on Jenna Ortega’s performance in the movie. Some love her, some have gone out of their way to describe her as flat.
Delia is on to something though; Astrid is very similar to Lydia and in that same rebellious nature wants to be nothing like her mother. She is exactly how she’s supposed to be, and her behaviour helps the past be repeated in the bad mother-daughter relationship Lydia had with Delia growing up.
And despite Lydia’s doom and gloom personality in the original movie, which seems to have remained in a much milder manner where Lydia has accepted her near-unique ability of seeing ghosts, we finally learn her mother is in fact alive.
This is something that was never explained in the original 1988 movie.
Astrid refuses to acknowledge Lydia’s ability to communicate with the dead, poking at her on every turn – how is it that she is famous for talking to Adam and Barbara but they’re not here to confirm her story or how come she can’t see Astrid’s father?
They’re simply ways to contradict her mother, without realising a very important fact until she gets herself in a pickle – Astria can see and communicate with ghosts and could have already done so many times without realising she had this ability, for refusing to admit to its existence.
Jeremy will be a ghost that will abuse this, tricking her twice.
It’s a different kind of character development to the one that Lydia had who in the end gained a second pair of guardians in Adam and Barbara when she had a very strained one with her parents by the end of the first movie.
Astrid is forced to embrace the truth about herself through a boy she likes (who appears perfectly normal, but the signs are all there when you think about it later).
And then Lydia is forced to make another deal with Beetlejuice to save her.
The music
The songs in his movie are an intricate part of the overall plot.
I have never heard of the 1968 MacArthur’s Park by Richard Harrison. I also have never heard the Donna Summer remake.
Still love this song weeks after.
It ties it really well as the Day-O sequel. It doesn’t aspire to replace Day-O (which were done by Adam and Barbara in the original movie), but it does serve as a reminder that Beetlejuice was the one who showed this trick to the Maitlands in the first place. His song had to be whackier than what they chose.
There are other great songs, and it’s has been recently announced that it will get its own Vinyl release from WaterTower Records and Waxwork.
Long time since I’ve listened to a record, but this one really does tempt me.
Unanswered Questions in Beetlejuice
If you were a fan of the original movie (or cartoon), go watch it.
If you’re a fan of Tim Burton’s work, go watch it.
If you’ve only realised you’re into the macabre, spooky and wacky recently, watch the original and then go see it.
If you’re a fan of Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara or Jenna Ortega, watch it.
If you’re nostalgic for the B-roll movies of our past, go watch it!
Can you believe the critics that there is a whole lot going on in this movie and could it have cut some of its storylines… there is a definite possibility, but Beetlejuice is chaos, and of course the story has to be bonkers.
Just compare… in the original:
- Adam and Barbara lived a peaceful life and then suddenly died.
- It’s heavily implied (with Jane’s one sentence) that having a family is a touchy subject for Barbara and plays heavily into what Jane is trying to sell of their house. It begs more questions but all we get in the end is that Barbara and Adam treat Lydia as their own.
- The Deetz’s are cooky in their own right. Delia is a weird artist, Lydia is obsessed with dark things and death (and can see ghosts), Charles gives into Delia a lot, treats Lydia lovingly (he doesn’t pay any mind to her goth style and seems to act like he can’t see any of it) and is just plain obsessed with birds.
- Otho is a designer, chemistry minor, turned exorcist who has no idea what he’s doing.
- Delia and Charles host two dinner parties giving us minor characters with a glimpse into some other characters who ultimately spent little time on screen.
- Is it true that suicide victims become civil servants in the afterlife?
- Beetlejuice worked for Juno. Did that mean he killed himself? Did Juno kill herself with that massive neck cut?
- Adam and Barbara are trying to get rid of the living.
- Beetlejuice wants to marry a teenage girl to get of out his predicament.
- There’s a whole plethora of dead people we never find out much about.
- Is the shrunken head at the end of the movie Harry the Hunter or is he Bob in the sequel?
- How does Beetlejuice unshrink for the second movie?
- Why did Jane continue to try to sell the Maitland house even when they were alive?
- What happened to the Maitland Hardware store after their deaths?
- Why is Lydia so obsessed with death? What happened to her mother?
- Why do ghosts have to stay 125 years on Earth after their death?
- Why is there a portal to Saturn’s moon and why does a single Sandworm live there?
- Why aren’t the repercussions to the exorcism explained in the book? Or is this simply a pesky reminder of the fact that Adam, Barbara and Otho didn’t read the book properly?
- Why does Beetlejuice have to have his name said three times?
- How did they return the Maitland house back to its former look so quickly by the end?
- What happened to the couple Beetlejuice threw out of the house?
More than half of these questions were never answered in the original movie (or the sequel). More than half of these questions were teased throughout the first movie and no more. We can look at Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in the same way. There are a lot of questions, not all of them are answered, both from this movie and the original.
Final Verdict
But Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is an over-the-top horror-style comedy about what happens to people when they die. It’s every bit as daft and wacky as expected.
10/10 for the imaginative mind of Tim Burton.
10/10 for Beetlejuice who feels like the whole movie with limited screen time.
10/10 for expending the Neitherworld and fully playing into the bureaucracy.
10/10 for being my favourite movie in 2024.
10/10 for again making me want another sequel.
10/10 for music.
You may disagree with my verdict but remember we’re all different. The reviews are divergent, representing the human subjectivity in all ways. Some only like it because it’s a sequel (and gives nostalgic vibes) or love the cast back in it.
Rotten Tomatoes gives us 78% from the critics and 82% from the audience.
The original movie has 83% from the critics and 82% from the audience.
IMDB gives the sequel 7.1/10 and the original 7.5/10. #
Between the two ratings, it’s safe to assume they’re not too far from each other in the eyes of the critic and audience overall votes.
Ultimately, the choice is yours whether you want to see it.
Personally, I’m going to have to see it again before the year is over.
What do you think?
Overall, the review offers valuable perspectives and a deep understanding of the movie and its characters.
-Wordpress AI feedback
I’ve mentioned this before, but WordPress has a great AI feature. This feature includes generating feedback on your written work. It offered some excellent tips on how to expend this text and help me update it but part of her view was the quote above.
What I want to know is if you, the reader, agree?
Does this review give valuable perspectives and deep understanding?
Did you enjoy reading the review?
Have you seen the movie yet, and what are your thoughts?
Who was your favourite character in this one?
Did you find any of the plots unnecessary?
Do you think we’ll ever get another sequel?
What were your thoughts on Astrid, Rory, Delores, Wolf, Bob and other new characters?
There is apparently an alternative ending in the script, which would have featured a cameo by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin. Do you think they should have brought them back and given us an on-screen closure instead of just Lydia giving us a quick update?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on all these questions here or on my social media.
The Wrap Up
As always, I hope you enjoyed the read. Tune in again next week for the next rendition of Inspiration Monday. This will be the only written blog section covering all previously existing topics. I would greatly appreciate likes and follows, especially on this blog post.
Next week, I’ll be throwing in a Behind the Pen post about yours truly.
And don’t forget to keep up with my Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!
You can find me on Facebook and Instagram under the username @lvlucaauthor or on Twitter (I’m not very active there) at @LVLuca1.
Until next time…
~ Love, L.V.
L.V. Luca 