The juice is definitely not loose.
As part of my annual Year in Review piece, I always include a couple of movies in my “Movies for Me” category. Films that are not good, but which I liked anyway. Usually, I have to be in the right mood for a film like that. Or a film includes one component that strikes me so perfectly that the rest of the film becomes insignificant. I was in a fantastic mood when I screened Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. When Battleship featured a scene showing a grid being used to fire missiles at an alien ship, I cackled like a maniac. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is not a movie for me.
The best way to describe Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is – convince Michael Keaton to put on a thirty-six-year-old costume, throw him against a wall in Tim Burton’s house, and see what squirts out. Then do it again. And again. And again. The result is an incoherent mess of disconnected storylines with a massive side of nostalgia, and random afterlife imaginings sprinkled on top. It’s as if the writers watched the old animated Beetlejuice series and just smashed a bunch of the episodes into a big glob for this film.
Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is all grown up and the host of a ghost hunting show, utilizing her ability to see the dead. She isn’t particularly happy with it, but her producer/boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux) will stop at nothing to exploit and cash in on her gift. Lydia is also a widow and mother. Her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) misses her dead father and believes Lydia is pretending to see ghosts because Lydia cannot see Astrid’s dad. If this movie focused on that plot and employed Beetlejuice (Keaton) as Astrid’s attempt to reunite with her father, the film might have been good. But wait…there’s more.
Beetlejuice’s centuries-dead, chopped-into-pieces, ex-wife Delores (Monica Bellucci) awakens, reassembles her body with a staple gun, then proceeds to hunt down Beetlejuice to get revenge on him for her death. Incidentally, she killed Beetlejuice (poisoned him) in order to literally suck his soul out of his body and that ability remained intact in the afterlife. As she hunts for him, she randomly sucks the souls out of other dead people because she’s, uh, really bad, I guess. Plus, Beetlejuice is already dead, but we’re told that Delores can make the dead “really dead.” Woof. Also, why is she only waking up now, hundreds of years later? I guess they didn’t throw Keaton’s body against the wall enough times to come up with literally any answer. But wait…there’s more.
Astrid meets a boy named Jeremy (Arthur Conti) and the two quickly hit it off. After hanging out a couple times, Jeremy kisses her, then reveals that he is dead. Eww. He offers to take Astrid to see her father, but secretly plans to steal her soul to bring himself back to life. At first glance, this seems like a way to connect this plot to Delores, but the writers do no such thing. Delores doesn’t connect to this at all, merely accidentally intersecting it with, just like all of the storylines in this film. But the writers do use it as the incentive for Lydia to summon Beetlejuice to help her save Astrid. And since the primary goal of this film is fan service, it is not the least bit surprising that Beetlejuice’s condition for helping is that Lydia marries him. It’s even less surprising that the film ends with another wedding scene.
Speaking of fan service, the film is stuffed full of it. Sand worms, the afterlife waiting room, shrunken head guys, Delia Deetz’s (Catherine O’Hara) artwork, the town model of Winter River, a real estate agent selling the Maitland house, the Maitland house, a climactic wedding scene, and even a musical number featuring a bunch of lip-syncing characters. And every last one of them falls completely flat. Which is probably why Burton’s director brain decided to incorporate a bunch of pointless indulgences that also fall flat.
There is a Claymation scene depicting Charles eaten by a shark after his plane crashes while en route to a birdwatching event. None of that is a typo. It’s Claymation because Jeffrey Jones (who played Charles) is a real-life registered sex offender, so bringing Jones back for this film was a non-starter. Eaten-by-a-shark removes Charles’ head and a chunk of his torso, allowing Charles to aimlessly, and facelessly, wander around the afterlife world while squirting blood all over. There is a flashback of Beetlejuice’s and Delores’ life done in black and white and Spanish. There is an afterlife detective named Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe) who was an actor playing a cop when he was alive, so gets to play a cop when he is dead (and he is trying to catch Delores). Get it? There is a “soul train” complete with dozens of disco dancers. GET! IT?!! And there is a Danny DeVito cameo to remind you that not everything in this movie was a bad idea.
By this point, you’re probably wondering what Beetlejuice is doing this whole time. He’s vaguely haunting Lydia. He’s running a call center with a bunch of shrunken-head guys. He leaves a flyer in the Maitland’s attic. He does a scene featuring a bunch of sight gags and a vicious Beetlejuice baby. He’s kind of hiding from Delores, but not really trying too hard. In other words, he’s doing nothing. Essentially, he’s really just there to justify the title.
Just because this isn’t a movie for me, doesn’t mean I hated it. Hell, I wasn’t even disappointed by it. It’s exactly what I expected it to be – a lazy film drenched in nostalgia, aimed at my generation, trying to cash in on the popularity of Jenna Ortega playing another spooky character. And that isn’t to slight Ortega. She was perfectly fine, doing what she could with a half-written character. Which is far more than we can say about Delores, a character so underwritten and underwhelming that Bellucci should sue for criminal negligence. But at least O’Hara and Dafoe seemed to be having a good time. I’ll even acknowledge the handful of moments during the film that actually were good (one example: Wolf Jackson’s assistant was a delightful detail in his scenes). Not to mention Keaton injecting as much energy as a 73-year-old is capable of. Which is impressive considering how many times Burton must have thrown Keaton at that wall.
Rating: Ask for thirteen dollars back and that they never make a sequel to Mr. Mom.
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