My Whole Life is a Dark Room

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

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Oh the nostalgia! Beetlejuice graced our theaters once again after 36 years and the nostalgia was out of control. 

Beetlejuice was a huge hit back in the eighty’s, if you happened to be living under a rock somewhere and didn’t already know. Not to say that it was everyone’s cup of tea but it pulled in 73.8 million big ones in ‘88 which is equivalent to roughly 196 million dollars today. Either way, it’s bonafide as a classic. It often gets pulled out to watch when October starts peeking around the corner. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the 2024 release sequel and if you never watched the original, I highly doubt this movie will make a fraction of the impact it made on those who did. 

It takes place 36 years after the original. Yes, in real time we waited 36 years but in the story of the movie, 36 years have passed. Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) has become a famous talk show host who can communicate with the dead. She has a daughter, a new addition to the story, Astrid (played by Jenna Ortega) and still frequently spends time with Delia Deetz (Catherine O’hara). Of course Winona and Catherine were part of the original movie so it was special seeing them and they were fantastic. I think Winona lost some of that dark goth “My whole life is a dark room” vibe but it really is hard not to love her. ‘Her’ as in Winona, but Lydia is also loveable. The movie centers the strained relationship between Lydia and Astrid. Astrid, having the same goth vibe as Lydia but thinking of her mom as a fraud when it comes to her supernatural ability to communicate with ghosts. She often leaves, wanting nothing to do with Lydia, and eventually gets entangled with an “evil” ghost teen boy who takes her to the underworld to switch souls with her so he can live again. Lydia uses Beetlejuice (Micheal Keaton) to get into the Underworld to save Astrid. This is an extremely high level summary, there are more details I could give for context but if you are a lover of Beetlejuice I highly encourage you to just go have some fun and see it in theaters. 

My Thoughts: 

This movie is extremely nostalgic and I think it’s in a good way. Tim Burton, director of the movie, was so true to the original but I felt like it didn’t hold him back from making it a true sequel and updating the script with the times. The town, Winter River, was the same. The bridge and the house were the same. The model in the attic was the same, the rubbery foam grass in the model that Beetlejuice was on was the same, even the sand monster was the same. I even think in post they tried to animate it to look the same as the original. I wonder, though, if they made an initial decision to keep it animated the same but ended up not being able to simply because the equipment used back then doesn’t exist anymore. Or if they tried to update it slightly but wanted it to be more or less the same. My feeling is that the equipment simply didn’t exist to make it look like the original sand monster from the 80’s but they got it pretty close. I didn’t even list everything that was the same in both movies but all of that is to prove that watching this movie is walking down memory lane while adding some new memories. 

However, even though it was nostalgic… the plot was too busy. I’m not sure why this creative decision was made but there were a few major plots happening throughout the movie at the same time. The more major one being Lydia saving Astrid from the underworld. The second being, Beetlejuice’s soul sucking wife, Delores LaVerge, came back from “the dead” and wanted revenge against Beetlejuice since he’s the one that killed her. All the while, Lydia’s money hungry boyfriend was trying to marry her and Delia was trying to communicate with Charles who was revealed to have died. It was hectic and something could have been removed while keeping the integrity of the movie, in my opinion. The two major plots didn’t play off of each other enough for there to be justification of keeping them both in the movie. The movie is only an hour and forty-five minutes long, it was short compared to movie times today where the minimum is two hours. The movie opens with Delores putting herself back together, since her limbs were being stored in different boxes in the basement of the underworld, and seeking revenge. Naturally I think this is the main incident of the movie that will drive the story of the movie but alas I was misdirected, tricked if you will. Then throughout the movie, it will go back and forth between the Lydia and Astrid storyline (the main story line) to random clips of Delores sucking ghost’s souls while looking for Beetlejuice but the clips of her doing that aren’t longer than five minutes. We still see Rory (Justin Theroux), the boyfriend desperately trying to tie the know. It all felt unnecessary. Delores’ storyline did push Beetlejuice and Lydia together to go back to that “marry me” arc but that was really it. Important? I’m not convinced it was.

Beetlejuice himself, who Michael Keaton reprised his role as, was still great but was a much slower version of the Beetlejuice we were familiar with from ‘88. He didn’t feel like the coked out demon who wanted to grope the ladies. Instead of constantly trying to be “resurrected”, he had found a spot in the underworld with a bunch of Bob’s, running a call center for those seeking exorcisms. He had the same way of speaking and the same look, it was just his energy that was different. I personally don’t take that away from Michael Keaton though, the man is 73. 

Charles Deetz and the Maitlands did not make it to the sequel. I’m not sure why Geena Davis wasn’t apart of the project but it makes sense to me why Alec Baldwin wasn’t a part of it. I’m sure he’s either retired or taking a long break from acting after the whole gun accident. It would have added to the nostalgia if they were a part of the sequel but as a viewer the movie didn’t feel like it was missing anything with them not being a part of it. I did, however, hear something interesting about Jefferey Jones (Charles Deetz). I heard that he is actually a registered sex offender after asking a 14 year old boy for sexually explicit photos. This may be common knowledge but I was totally unaware. I never followed Jefferey Jones' career, I only knew him from Beetlejuice so good riddance. I’m glad he did not join the sequel, sick freak. 

My last issue with the movie is that it came out in early September! No no no, it felt wrong. Beetlejuice is an autumnal movie, more specifically Halloween. If one decided to make an October movie playlist leading up to Halloween, similar to what Hallmark does or used to do for Christmas, Beetlejuice is without a doubt top 10. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was released in America on September 6th. Need I remind you, the first official day of autumn is September 22nd which means, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was technically released in the summer. Beetlejuice and summer movie do not belong in the same sentence and yet, here we are. That being said, there are some big movies set to be released in October like the Joker sequel, Venom: The Last Dance, and We Live in Time with Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh. I have not the faintest idea how movie releases are scheduled or negotiated, but the fact that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice wasn’t even released at the end of September making it an autumn movie release feels spiritually wrong. 

At the end of the day, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was good, not great but honestly still a fun watch. Like I said at the beginning of this post, if you’re a fan of the original Beetlejuice, go watch the sequel in theaters. It packs the nostalgia on heavy and it’s hard not to smile regardless of the new changes in the sequel. It didn’t feel like Tim set out to make the sequel better than the first, it truly felt like an homage. For those not a big fan of the original movie, this movie won’t mean much to you and I wouldn’t tell you to go spend hard earned bucks on a ticket. You can wait for it to stream on one of the thousand streaming platforms that exist these days, and play it during the appropriate time of the year, please I’m begging you!

I give Beetlejuice Beetlejuice a 7 out of 10 mostly for nostalgia! 

Au revoir!

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: good or not good?

• Good
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