{"id":59968,"date":"2024-09-09T15:57:01","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T19:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=59968"},"modified":"2024-09-09T15:57:07","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T19:57:07","slug":"beetlejuice-beetlejuice-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2024\/09\/beetlejuice-beetlejuice-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Beetlejuice Beetlejuice \u2013 Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            In preparation for \u201cBeetlejuice Beetlejuice,\u201d I watched the original film from 1988. I found that I liked \u201csome\u201d things about it, like the set and character designs and much of the humor, but it\u2019s not a film I would recommend overall. The special effects weren\u2019t well-integrated (even for the 80\u2019s), motivations between the warring factions made no sense, and worst of all, the characters just weren\u2019t likeable. I\u2019m not talking about obvious villains like the ruthless profiteers or Michael Keaton\u2019s sleazy trickster-for-hire Betelgeuse (hereafter referred to as \u201cBeetlejuice\u201d). I mean that I couldn\u2019t even root for harmless yuppie couple the Maitlands (you guys are dead, find something to do with your eternal lives and stop bothering the living) or Winona Ryder\u2019s teenage goth icon Lydia Deetz (\u201c\u2019somebody\u2019 wants attention\u201d). The good news is that the new film is better about making its protagonists likeable. The bad news is that, while it addresses one issue, others remain and a few new ones pop up.<\/p>\n\n\n

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            The story finds the now-adult Lydia returning to her family\u2019s old home to attend her father\u2019s funeral. In tow are her eccentric artist stepmother Delia (Catherine O\u2019Hara, reprising her role from the first movie), her manipulative fianc\u00e9 Rory (Justin Theroux), and her distant daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega). Though moody around her family and bullies, Astrid isn\u2019t as standoffish as Lydia was in the original. She even makes friends with local boy Jeremy (Arthur Conti) and the two have a sweet little romance that you know is too wholesome for this movie, so something\u2019s going to have to go wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            What isn\u2019t too wholesome is what\u2019s going on in the Netherworld. Ever-scummy bio-exorcist Beetlejuice isn\u2019t having much luck with his favorite pastime of haunting Lydia, appearing to her for only a split-second at a time, which makes her question her sanity. He\u2019s being haunted himself by his ex-wife Delores (Monica Bellucci). The two have a tumultuous history, having killed one another in their human forms. Now she\u2019s back in his (after)life and she wants\u2026 to suck out his soul, I think. Or maybe she wants to remarry him? Or use him for a demonic ritual? Like its predecessor, this movie has a problem establishing motivations. Her inventive introduction in a scene where she fixes her own dismemberment is supposed to compensate for a lack of character development. Also underdeveloped is Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson, an actor who played detectives in his lifetime before transitioning to a career as an actual detective in the afterlife. Sometimes he gets his roles and his job mixed up. Great idea for a character, but the movie never quite knows how to work him into the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Twists and turns wind toward a wedding between Lydia and Rory that Beetlejuice wants to crash. Poor Lydia just wants to keep her family alive and Beetlejuice out of her life, but of course things can\u2019t be that simple. She has to go through an ordeal filled with demonic babies, a half-devoured-by-fish ex-husband (not to be confused with her half-devoured-by-fish father), a literal Soul Train, and another forced musical number that wants to outdo the \u201cDay-O (The Banana Boat Song)\u201d sequence from the original.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Like the original \u201cBeetlejuice,\u201d I like the creativity and humor on display here, but I don\u2019t like that the script is full of holes (and not just of the \u201cafterlife rules are random\u201d variety) and plot threads that go nowhere. What helps is that in this movie, the three generations of women that serve as protagonists are ultimately more loving and supportive than the characters in the original. In fact, it helps so much that, unlike its predecessor, I will recommend this movie. I\u2019ll even look forward to the inevitable third installment, as I seriously doubt that a franchise obsessed with saying a character\u2019s name three times is going to stop at two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeetlejuice Beetlejuice\u201d is rated PG-13 for violent content, macabre and bloody images, strong language, some suggestive material and brief drug use. Its running time is 105 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             In preparation for \u201cBeetlejuice Beetlejuice,\u201d I watched the original film from 1988. I found that I liked \u201csome\u201d things about it, like the set and character… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":59969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2801],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59968"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59970,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59968\/revisions\/59970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}