2024 really has been a year for resurrecting dead IPS with sequels and remakes that nobody really asked for or wanted whether it's possibly forgettable popcorn movies like Twisters Noble failures like alien Romulus or absolute garbage like the crow it really has been a mixed bag of successes and failures this year but which one is Beetle juu 2 does it do justice to the classic 1988 original or is it just another embarrassing attempt to milk an old IP for a quick profit well weirdly enough I think it's a bit of both as a sequel to the
original movie it's a decent enough effort that mixes Tim Burton's usual Gothic fairy tale Style with over-the-top visual gags to deliver something that's pretty unique in modern Cinema Michael Keaton hasn't missed a beat in 35 years and slips right back into the role of Beetle Juice like it was yesterday while Jenna Orga provides a nice dead pan counter point that Sparks well off him there's some decent momentto moment gags and plenty of little callbacks to the original some of which work better than others that being said the movie suffers from a cluttered script that's weighed
down by far too many characters and subplots and doesn't seem to know who or what to focus on far too much time is wasted on a character who isn't even in the movie and in terms of actual performances well let's just say that some of the actors have aged better than others anyway I've [ __ ] around with my intro long enough let's get this review under way properly go ahead Barber say it Beetle Juice so the movie kicks off in the present day where Lydia is now a successful talk show host specializing in the
Paranormal all good you might think except that she's addicted to prescription meds estranged from her daughter asterid controlled by her manipulative boyfriend and haunted by visions of Beetle Juice things soon go from bad to worse when she finds out that her Father Charles was killed in a plane crash and so the family converges on their old home in Winter River for the funeral this is where asterid meets a suspiciously nice well adjusted local teenager named Rory and quickly Falls head over heels for him unfortunately she eventually discovers that he's actually a ghost that only she
can see and the only way that they can be together is if she crosses over into the Afterlife to bring him back to the real world but wouldn't you know it it was all a trick so that he could swap places with her this forces Lydia to summon Beetlejuice for help but only on the condition that he gets to marry her when this is all over because he's also on the run from his vengeful ex-wife who wants to suck the soul out of his body or something oh yeah and while all this is going on
dilia accidentally kills herself with poisonous snakes while doing some stupid ritual at her husband's grave there's also a dead movie star acting as a paranormal police detective a jealous boyfriend pulling strings behind the scenes and The Escape of a bunch of employees from the afterlife to deal with so if you haven't guessed it by now there's quite a lot going on in this movie and not all of it is good or necessary and I think really this is one of the film's biggest problems there's so many subplots and different characters that most of them don't
get anything like the attention they need Monica bucci's Dolores is built up as the big antagonist of the movie but she's barely on screen for more than 30 seconds at a time before the action jumps somewhere else and it got to the point where I kind of forgot she was even in the film after a while William defo hams it up in a role that doesn't have any clear purpose in the story and just kind of exists for its own sake he has like one gag that he keeps playing over and over and honestly it
stopped being funny after like the first there's also a subplot about Lydia's ex-husband who died which is so underdeveloped that he's barely even mentioned and so the big payoff near the end Falls flat because I've never even seen the guy before also it's completely overridden by the death of Charles which functionally does exactly the same thing in terms of character motivations and eats up a [ __ ] ton of screen time in the process with basically no payoff because let's just say the actor turned out to be a very bad person in the Real Worlds
the original movie was tight and efficient at just over 90 minutes long with every scene and character contributing something to the story and not a moment of screen time wasted beatle juice 2 on the other hand feels bloated and chaotic struggling under the weight of too many ideas and extraneous subplots unable to decide on a core narrative to focus on and taking way too long to get going [ __ ] man even Beetle Juice himself doesn't really show up in force until like 40 minutes into the movie and that's where it actually comes alive for
the first time Michael Keaton might be well into his 70s by now but holy [ __ ] you'd never know it the guy's just as high energy and over the top as he was 35 years ago his delivery is pitched perfect and every moment that he's on screen is a joy to watch He's neatly balanced out by Jenna Ortega who delivers her usual dead pan performance but always seems to know just went to drop in little moments of humanity and vulnerability portraying a teenage girl who's kind of lonely and trying to reconnect with her family
instead of just being a carbon copy of Lydia from the first movie on that subject though well it's nice to see Winona Rider go going through a career Resurgence [ __ ] me somebody really should have gotten her to rewatch the original movie because she Now talks and acts like a completely different character yeah she's got the same stupid hairstyle and there's a superficial attempt to make her look and dress the same but Ryder plays her more like Joyce from stranger things than Lydia from the first film there's a vague hint that maybe she's going
through a midlife crisis and is trying to ReDiscover her old self but like so many other storylines in this movie it's not given enough time and attention to actually get the audience invested and Jesus Christ bringing Katherine O'Hara back for this film was a huge [ __ ] mistake not only is her character gratingly annoying and adds nothing to the narrative except to make stupid decisions at every opportunity but she delivers the kind of hysterical scenery Che performance that makes Nick Cage look like a model of subtle restraint yeah I know dilia is meant to
be some kind of wacky New York socialite but damn man she was never this bad in the original you could honestly have cut her and her stupid subplot with Charles out of the entire film and would have lost nothing of value ultimately despite some decent visual effects solid Direction and fun performances by a cast that mostly does their best with the material I can't shake the feeling that Beetle Juice 2 is more like several potential movies jammed together into one script a bunch of disjointed ideas and plot lines that never quite meshes together into a
cohesive narrative a slightly disappointing sequel that really doesn't live up to its predecessor anyway that's that's all I've got for today go away now
