Tim Burton’s most recent film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a sequel to his much beloved 1988 classic, so it has some big shoes to fill. The sequel contains many highlights, but does not quite recapture the charm of the original. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is nostalgic and lovingly crafted, but it is too busy and overcrowded to enchant or haunt viewers.
At first, the story focuses on Lydia Deetz, a character familiar to fans of the original film. Lydia hosts a show on the living dead, helping out families facing paranormal perils. Lydia begins to struggle with hallucinations but as the story unfolds, Lydia’s journey is overshadowed by the presence of too many antagonists. The acting is excellent, but there are too many people with negative motives, and the film features a number of unnecessary and distracting celebrity cameos. So much happens that it is hard to connect with any individual character.
In the film’s second half, the plot becomes more and more unbalanced (a bit like a lopsided mohawk that has a manicured front and a back, which is somewhat of an afterthought). The beginning is busy but well-crafted, whereas the ending feels kind of slapped on. As the credits roll, it is not really clear what even happened to the title character, Beetlejuice, because there is little closure or resolution. Seemingly in a bid to setup a third film, Burton does not bring the narrative to a satisfying conclusion, and the ambiguity of the ending is dissatisfying rather than intriguing.
While we love how Beetlejuice Beetlejuice pays homage to the original effects and creativity that made the first movie great, the busyness of the plot is a major turn off; the story goes through more loops and twists than a sandworm. If some of the twists had been left for a third film the sequel might have felt like a more complete movie. We rate Beetlejuice Beetlejuice 3 out of 5 stars.
