“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is a sequel of the original made in 1988. Astrid Deetz (Jenna Ortega), Lydia Deetzs’ daughter, doesn’t believe, or like, her mother (Winona Ryder) and only wishes to be able to see or speak to her father, Richard (Santiago Cabrera), again who died years prior.
The original “Beetlejuice” has been an all time favorite of mine: the plot, the way props were created, such as the stop-motion sandworm, the characters and their actors made it a movie I enjoyed. An opposite experience occurred while watching “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is a great movie to watch if you’d like to stay neutral or laugh awkwardly the entire time the movie is playing. While there are some genuinely funny parts, most coming from Delia Deetz (Cathrine O’Hara) and Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), the bulk of the movie consists of forced humor that wouldn’t even be funny if there were a laugh track with people cracking up.
Some actors within the movie are effortlessly funny, Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) being a prime example of that. Betelgeuse stayed the same which I am very grateful as, if he hadn’t stayed the same, the movie would be even less “Beetlejuice” adjacent than it already is. Other actors tended to lack the emotion and humor that they’re characters were supposed to portray, Jenna Ortega, and Arthur Conti, occasionally was an example of this.
Speaking of drastic changes, the majority of the style and looks of different practical effects have changed. For example, the sandworm. Hands down one of the most recognizable parts of the movie even though it only shows up for a split second, while it’s still recognizable in the second movie it lost the character of it.
In the first movie, the sandworm appears to be made of clay with a stop-motion effect to it. In the second one, it appears to be completely CGI and has no physical effort put into it, whereas the clay sandworm had a lot of time, effort, and purpose put into it.
Not only is the sandworm CGI, a majority of the movie or the scary aspects of it are as well. The predominance of movies made recently have a random amount placed inside of them and some effects don’t rely on it, however, it is unnecessary to make a majority of the effects CGI based. Almost every one of Delores’s scenes, as well as the whole ending, are CGI which I do understand is hard to do any other way but it takes out the feeling that puts depth into the movie.
There were some scenes I genuinely enjoyed during this movie, I did enjoy all scenes from Delia and Delores, scenes from the Land of the Dead, and most of the scenes that had Beetlejuice in it. However, those scenes are very few and far in between.
This is a great movie to watch right after you see “Beetlejuice” for the first time but if you’ve seen it before this movie came out and it had time to marinate with you, this is not a movie you would enjoy.
