The juice is well and truly loose as Michael Keaton's bio-exorcist returns at long last with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. It's the most Burtonish Burton movie yet, but there are moments that could've been bio-exorcised without being missed. Warning: spoilers ahead!
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00:00The juice is well and truly loose as Michael Keaton's bioexorcist returns at long last
00:05with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. It's the most Burton-ish Burton movie yet, but there are
00:09moments that could have been bioexorcized without being missed. Warning, spoilers ahead.
00:14Teased in the trailer is the film's big bad. One of the most notable crimes Beetlejuice
00:18Beetlejuice commits is introducing a great villain in the form of Monica Bellucci's Dolores
00:22and doing absolutely nothing with her for most of the film. Revealed to be the cause
00:26of Beetlejuice's death, the movie sets Dolores up as an impressive force, broken out of containment
00:30as a live-action corpse bride, and sucking the life out of Danny DeVito's janitor before
00:35setting off to exact her revenge on the former flame that killed her. And that's it. From
00:39there, the actress spends the rest of the film walking towards a camera through the
00:42kooky and crooked halls of the afterlife in search of Beetlejuice.
00:46Where is Beetlejuice?
00:48Only in the film's final act, when the movie is rushing to lay all its plot threads to
00:52rest, does she finally encounter her ex-hubby, only to be swiftly eaten by a sandworm. It's
00:56nothing new for Tim Burton to cast his real-life romantic partner in a project, but here's
01:00hoping that in whatever gig he has lined up next, Bellucci gets more to work with.
01:04If we had a nickel for every time Jenna Ortega was the daughter of a popular goth character
01:09and falls for a local boy who turns out to be a monster, we'd have two nickels. Which
01:13isn't much, but it's weird that they both happened in Tim Burton projects.
01:17Pain and suffering are always inevitable.
01:18Where have you been all my life?
01:20Equally as impactful as Dolores, Arthur Conti's Jeremy really does feel like a rough draft of
01:25Hunter Duhan's Tyler from Netflix's Wednesday series. Which is even more annoying, given that
01:30he actually gives a great but grossly underused performance. The only benefit to be found in his
01:34inclusion is that his killer spirit, Richie, acts as an entry point into the world that Astrid has
01:39refused to believe in. But even that leads to some sketchy plot holes.
01:42Astrid! Stop torturing your mother!
01:48Did the youngest Deeds family member really need romance in order to see things from her
01:51mother's perspective? More to the point, what was it that allowed her to see Jeremy in the first
01:56place? When the ghost spills the beans about his plans to use Astrid's soul to escape the afterlife,
02:00he even admits he doesn't know why she saw him. We wish it had been given more time,
02:04or none at all, instead of lingering in storyline limbo.
02:08Wednesday provoked questions about Burton's racially skewed casting choices,
02:12and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice does little to dispel them. In fact, the only scenes in the new sequel
02:16to involve characters of color are when, dragged into the afterlife by Jeremy, Astrid finds herself
02:21at risk of being sent to the great beyond, and has to board a subway train filled with Black extras
02:25dressed in 70s gear and afros. It's a cheap, outdated set piece that only highlights just
02:30how limited Burton's films are in regards to diversity. When the only speaking role a Black
02:34cast member has is as a conductor ordering everyone, all aboard the soul train, it shines
02:39a spotlight on the fact that more work should have been done here. Like the soul train itself,
02:43the sequence never really goes anywhere.
02:45A minute spent paying attention to a character played by a convicted sex offender is a minute
02:49too many. And yet, in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Jeffrey Jones' Charles Dietz is not only the
02:54main drive for getting the family back together, but is repeatedly — and unnecessarily — revisited
02:59throughout the film.
03:00What?! Why?! No! No! No!
03:06For those that don't know, in the early 2000s, Jones was arrested for possession of child
03:10pornography, as well as soliciting a minor to pose for nude photos. He was given five years
03:15probation and required to register on the National Database as a child sex offender.
03:19While Jones doesn't reprise his role, the film resorts to stop-motion animation to reveal
03:23Charles' cause of death, explaining that he was killed in a shark attack during a bird-watching
03:27expedition. For the rest of the film, Charles is shown as half the man he was,
03:30wandering through the afterlife as a pair of legs topped by a shark-shaped bite where his
03:34head used to be. While the uninformed might be fine with it, Jones' continued presence
03:38throughout the film is strongly felt when it shouldn't be there at all. Why couldn't they
03:42have simply used a line of dialogue to write him out of the story in the same way that the
03:45mere mention of a loophole explains why Barbara and Adam aren't present this time around?
03:49I can't believe Grandpa is dead.
03:51Instead, far too much attention is paid to Charles' character when simply giving up the
03:56ghost would have been the preferable approach. In a film that includes a horrifying birth
04:00sequence involving a Beetlejuice baby having a train-spotting moment, somehow,
04:04Justin Theroux's parasitic boyfriend weaseling his way into the Dietz dynasty comes off creepier.
04:09Oh my God. I was helpfully getting some boxes in town, then I heard you screaming. Are you all right?
04:15Another new character that makes little impact in the film as a whole,
04:18Theroux does a great job in turning Rory, the new beau of Winona Ryder's Lydia,
04:22into a loathsome foil. The problem is that the big reveal of his true agenda and the
04:26justice he's dealt as a result are all dished out in the time it takes to say,
04:30Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.
04:32There could have actually been something worth playing around with here in terms of story.
04:36Rory secretly shares the same view as Astrid, whose disbelief in her mother's story is the
04:40wedge that pushes them apart and may have made for a more interesting family fix by the end.
04:45Instead, Rory's forced to admit to his scheme before being swiftly carried away by a sandworm
04:49in Dolores at the end of the film. As a result, Theroux's character ends up being just one more
04:54of many that are rushed offstage when time could have been spent to reveal that the real monster
04:57was the other guy haunting the Dietz family all along, and not the one with the mad green
05:01hair and rotten teeth, even if he's no good either.