Beetlejuice is such a beloved movie that a lot of fans watch it annually around spooky season. Other than the Fox Kids animated series, the Ghost with the Most has been away for quite some time. Now, Beetlejuice is back to terrorize the Deetz family once again in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Does the long-awaited sequel meet the expectations fans have had for almost 40 years, or is this latest outing dead on arrival? Let’s dive into this ghostly adventure to find out.

The Good

The visuals throughout Beetlejuice Beetlejuice are nothing short of incredible. Everything is shot particularly well, and the special effects are creative and life-like. The traditional effects and makeup used throughout are brilliant enough to transport the audience into the ghost dimension. Classic-style stop-motion is present and welcome. The makeup used for those in the afterlife proves to be cleverly constructed in order to tell us how they died in the most humorous ways possible. This could possibly be a strong contender for makeup, special effects, and production design.

This movie is an absolute riot. It’s filled with terrifically-twisted humor from start to finish. The dialogue is witty and quotable, and the sight gags almost never end. It’s a movie that had the whole theater laughing uproariously. While hilarious throughout its runtime, the movie’s humor never detracts from the heart or emotional moments and finds a perfect balance.

Thankfully, this new movie is not a retread of the original. There have been a lot of legacy sequels that essentially tell the same story as the first film, but that’s not the case here. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice plays off of what the classic set up while telling a new story all its own. Any nostalgia moments actually feel organic to the story instead of “hey remember this” moments.

The overall lore of Beetlejuice is expanded upon quite nicely. The audience learns much more about the ghost realm and how it works, more about The Handbook for the Recently Undead, and even about Beetlejuice’s backstory. Finding out about what happened next for the human characters from the original was exciting and felt earned. It was nice to delve deeper into everything after all these years.

Each of the performances were absolutely excellent, but there were a few who stood out above the rest. Michael Keaton is just as chaotic and eccentric as ever as the titular demon. Catherine O’Hara, surprisingly, steals the show in some scenes. I personally found her character annoying in the original, but she’s an absolute blast in this one and is clearly having fun in the role. Winona Ryder perfectly balances humor and emotion in her return as Lydia Deetz. Willem Dafoe gives a wacky and wildly entertaining performance. Again, all the acting is great, but these in particular elevate the movie with how good their performances are.

The Bad

The pacing of the film could have been smoothed out a bit. The early scenes feel a little slow while the ones toward the end feel like a lot. This is heavily due to having too many conflicts. There are three main conflicts that all need to be set up in addition to reintroducing this world and the characters. There’s one conflict in particular that feels like it’s extra and not super necessary. If that was removed, or even saved for a third movie, everything would have meshed better. The other two conflicts blend together quite nicely.

Light spoilers with this issue, but there is a point in which the ghost world’s police are looking for Beetlejuice. Why don’t they just say his name three times to make him appear? There’s even a point in the movie when another dead person in the ghost world summons him this way, so why don’t they just do that? In fact, there’s another character who spends a lot of their time looking for Beetlejuice who could have probably done the same thing. There could have been at least a throwaway line explaining why they couldn’t, and if there is, it needed to be more clearly stated. This could also just be a plot hole left in so that fun events can occur, in which case it’s worth it.

Conclusion

Tim Burton is back and in true form. It’s such a relief to see him make a movie that he’s passionate about rather than throwing some cash-grab reboot together. His love of filmmaking shines through every scene of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and fans of his classic work have a lot to look forward to with this one.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice does feel a bit unevenly paced due to having one subplot too many, but it’s still as zany, twisted, dark, and entertaining as audiences could ever hope. The visuals are spectacular, the humor is top-notch, and the lore is expanded upon in exciting ways. It all meshes to create a truly fun outing to the movie theater.

Rating: 9/10

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