The classic that is Beetlejuice can never be duplicated or sequel-ed, so I get why Tim Burton placed emphasis on the fact that this is a new movie. I know we all wanted the Maitlands in this film but we got Astrid who, in my opinion, is a great addition to this iteration of the continuation of this film. However, this script was all over the place.
Let’s start with the bad because I don’t want to lead y’all on. You should know upfront. Danny DeVito, Willem Dafoe, Justin Theroux, and Monica Belluci are in this film. They all shouldn’t have been in this film. We didn’t need these three characters and let me tell you why. Someone called Danny DeVito and told him that he would be a ghostly janitor. A JANITOR! And in this universe, this man said, “Sure, I’ll come in to play a janitor.” I think the movie wanted to play up his role because him doing his job near a restricted looking place, of sorts, was the reason why Delores got to put herself back together and start sucking souls.
Speaking of Monica Belluci’s character, Delores, her whole background and motive was dumb. What I will say is that her backstory gave us crucial information that was never addressed in the original: who was Beetlejuice and how did he die? Outside of that, there was nothing. You didn’t even need her for that part, honestly. Here’s what makes it worse. The team did such a beautiful job with the scene where she put herself back together. Was the scene too long? Absolutely because she served no purpose, however, with that being said, that scene was pretty cool. After that scene, you see her like four more times and DASSIT! Her only motive is to suck the soul of Beetlejuice, AND THEY NEVER TELL US WHY SHE NEEDS TO DO THIS!! In life, I get it. You suck souls to stay immortal. What are we sucking souls for in death? Someone tell me because the movie did not. Someone in the movie made mention of her sucking your soul and you being dead dead. It might have been Beetlejuice himself. How can you be more dead? Where do you even go after that because they told us this is where you go when you die? You see what I mean? Mess.
Willem Dafoe…I love him. He’s phenomenal as an actor. We’ve seen it in multiple movies. He was funny in this movie but also unnecessary. His character, Wolf Jackson, is an actor who played a cop, and so, in the afterlife, he’s a cop. A cheesy cop. He is supposed to keep the underworld safe from the living and other dead people who don’t follow dead law? I don’t know really what his job is besides monitoring if the living come down to the underworld. When Lydia comes down there, there is an alarm that goes off and they’re looking for Beetlejuice because Delores is killing people and leaving his name at every crime scene. Again, in this universe, someone called Defoe and said, “we have this role for you!” He read it and said, “This is great” when it was not. He wasn’t terrible by any means but the script didn’t do him any favors.
Moving to the original cast starting with Winona Ryder as the beloved Lydia Deetz. Lydia is a mom now and she is nothing like how we thought she would be as a mom to Astrid, and it did not work for me. There was on point in the movie where Delia says to her something to the effect of, “Where is that antsy teen who used to torment me?” She says this to her towards the middle of the movie and I had been asking myself that question since the movie started. Lydia was taking pills, she has a reality TV, and her kid hates her but is just as weird as she was when she was her age. They should have been the best of friends! They should have both been getting on Delia’s nerves. It would have been better if Astrid was the opposite of Lydia. I would have believed the tension. It was nice to know she married a man who was a free spirit and who she used to be. That seemed to compliment who she was in the original. I wanted to see more of the dad. I will get to that in a minute.
Delia, Astrid, Beetlejuice, Jeremy, and Bob could have been the entire movie if you revamped the script. Please give Catherine O’Hara all her things. She popped back into this role and between here and Keaton, they felt like exactly who I know them to be. This is what we want. I actually really enjoyed that they played off the shrunken head dude and made Beetlejuice name in Bob. I don’t know why this was funny to me. Jeremy and Astrid were a nice surprise. I did wonder when I started the movie if she could see the dead like her mom. It’s funny. I did wonder how Lydia was able to know if the person was alive or dead. They never really explain that. It just seems like they can see the dead but the dead have to tell them that they’re dead for them to realize they’re dead. Does that make sense? Anyway, I saw the twist but it was clever and then what was really going on with Jeremy was even more compelling. Hey screenwriters, THIS IS YOUR MAIN STORY. Jeremy trouble, add dead dad and stir. This wasn’t supposed to be this hard. We didn’t even need danger for Beetlejuice. HE IS DANGER. Just let him be that.
Now, I didn’t forget Justin Theroux as Rory. If you want to keep him, do something better with him and Lydia. I don’t know if I blame how they wrote Lydia, Rory, or both, but this was a mess and a half. It was dumb, forced, and we didn’t need it. Rewrite this movie where either Rory is actually a good person that Lydia wants to possibly marry or make him the cliche sleaze bag that we have to find out is a terrible person. We could have waited to find out that Jeremy was dead after the enter the afterlife and go through the journey there. We could have incorporated the dad better and still had to begrudgingly call on Beetlejuice. And add more Bob! He was great!
Y’all tell me what you thought? Do you see the vision for what could have been?
