Spring Jenkins

The other day, I saw the movie Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Or, as I prefer to say, “Beetlejuice 2.” Call it paranoia, but saying the name twice is getting dangerously close to invoking a certain trickster ghost, and let’s be honest: my life needs less chaos, not more!

I am not going to go into a breakdown of the movie. If you want that, check out the Wikipedia page on it that sums it up nicely. (Warning: spoilers abound. But duh.) I will also forewarn anyone reading this that I am not an expert on writing reviews or anything of that nature, especially regarding films.

But this is not really a review as much as it is a…well, let’s call it a “pondering,” shall we? Just a little thing that is nagging me. Or maybe it’s a couple of things. I’ll get to that (those?) in a moment.

I loved the original Beetlejuice. (Look, the word is here three times! I’m in trouble now!) Like most sequels, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice wasn’t quite as good as the original. But what I’m questioning is whether it’s nostalgia that has elevated the original in my mind, or if it’s that pesky fiction degree that I have that makes me immediately dissect the sequel and find it lacking.

By the way, if you ever want to ruin fiction as entertainment for yourself, get a degree in it. Ugh.

Now, I’m well aware you don’t need a degree to be able to predict certain things in movies. My own father, who only went to the ninth grade himself, used to wow me with how easily he could see through so-called plot-twists. And so goeth the wheel of time: now I do the same with my own son. Seeing the amazement in his face is priceless. But that just comes with experience.

So unsurprisingly, when Jeremy (Arthur Conti) and Astrid (Jenna Ortega) breeze past both of Jeremy’s parents at his house and neither turned around, my date and I–both people of, ahem, a “certain age”–casted knowing glances at each other. You don’t need formal education to know immediately that those two are dead AF.

In fact, learning that Jeremy was dead himself and also the one who murdered his parents was absolutely zero surprise.

So the predictability was disappointing. But that’s not what bothered me the most. I mean, let’s be honest. We don’t watch Tim Burton films for anything particularly clever or thought provoking. We watch it for the sheer fun.

But. But!

What did bother me was the whole subplot of Delores, played by Monica Bellucchi. I mean…did that even need to be there?

I think the whole idea was to give Beetlejuice (“Betelgeuse,” if you’re a purist, played by Michael Keaton) a reason to want to marry Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder). The premise that he’s trying to escape his first wife by marrying Lydia was flimsy at best. I mean, c’mon. Beetlejuice still has a picture of Lydia in his workplace and tried to marry her in the original. Did he really need a reason beyond that? Wasn’t she literally “the one who got away”?

The Delores subplot could have been cut out completely. It didn’t add anything to the plot. In fact, I would have preferred to see Delores (and the whole actor-turned-detective–gods, that was dumb) thing dropped and have the part of Astrid’s father Richard (Santiago Cabrera) fleshed out a bit more. It would have made so many parts of the movie hit harder: Astrid’s grief and anger at her mother; Lydia’s guilt at her inability to see Richard; the subsequent heartfelt reunion of the two when he brought them back together. Actually, that would have made it come full circle in a way: Richard’s death which tore them apart would have been resolved by the late Richard himself.

I do love when things circle back like that.

On the subject of Richard, he never does explain why he doesn’t reveal himself to Lydia and I would have liked to have seen that. I suppose it’s because he’s working in the afterlife, but I got the impression that he was staying away for a reason, and that reason wasn’t explained well, if at all.

Or if it was, I missed it completely.

Oh, well. Overall, though, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was pretty fun. But was it worth the price of the movie? Not really.

Luckily, we caught the matinee. If it wasn’t for the great company that I was keeping on that particular afternoon, I probably wouldn’t have even spent that.

Watch it, for sure–but wait to stream it.