Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Note: This review contains indirect spoilers.

If Beetlejuice was "probably good, but I don't get it", Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is firmly in the "not good but I guess it's okay if you like it" camp for me.

For one, the original film had its fair share of gore and gross-out humor, but it was never the main point and always had that classic Tim Burton goofiness that made it fun. But this sequel has lost sight of that balance, choosing instead to bring it into (the already crowded) spotlight.

The crowdedness is another problem. This movie has a B, C, and D plot, which sucks up all the screen time. There's the funeral plot, the wedding plot, the teens' plot, the ex-wife plot, the actor-turned-police-chief plot, the shrunken head plot, the grieving wife plot, the toxic boyfriend plot, and the mother-daughter plot. By jamming all of this into one movie, many of these plots don't conclude in a satisfying way. Especially the wedding plot, which is resolved with a single hand-wavey sentence from Astrid (Jenna Ortega).

In addition to having too much gore, there's also too many gross manipulative relationships: three of them! Having one would be good social commentary, but three feels like reducing this movie's women to mere plot devices, used to increase the notoriety of the male villians.

Finally, Everyone is wacky in this movie. There are just no normal people in this movie to act as foils to all the wacky characters. In the original, you have Barbara and Adam to contrast against the Deetz family. When everyone's unhinged, it starts to be a little one-note. Why revive a 36-year-old franchise just to be one-note?