Is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) Worth Your Time?

[Music] hey guys what's up klex here and welcome to the channel today I'm going to give you guys a review of Tim Burton's latest movie be juice beju which is a direct sequel to The 1988 film beju all right so right off the bat I should disclose that I am a fan of the original it's a fun Supernatural dark comedy from a director that knows how to blend horror with light-hearted Antics so that families can enjoy them together there's also a lot of attention to detail lots of quality practical effects some decent stop motion the soundtrack from Danny Elfman and Harry Bonte is great but Michael Keaton really drives it all home as a TI character and I doubt the film would be as Fally remembered as it is today if it weren't for his performance I highly recommend checking it out even if you have no interest in seeing the sequel and I would advise against seeing the sequel if you haven't already seen the original because otherwise a lot of things are probably going to make you end up feeling confused but an underrated aspect of the original is how great The Supporting Cast was given that this is a sequel to a film released over three decades ago it's probably not surprising but still disappointing to find that not every cast member in the original could come back most notably would be the absence of Alec Baldwin and Gina Davis who played the lead characters the mands and Jeffrey Jones who played Charlie Deets now don't get me wrong given what the actors had gotten up to in their personal lives it would have made including them in the film making process difficult but story-wise it sets up a pretty awkward situation having to explain why these major characters are nowhere to be found the matland were the emotional anchors of the original movie you felt sorry for them because they were merely victims of tragic circumstance and had to navigate the afterlife as a result however when we return to the original house they were forced to haunt they are nowhere to be found the brief mention that we get of the maintenance not being there because of a loophole then leing it at that seemed unsatisfying and the film itself seems to acknowledge that it's an unsatisfying answer as a character pokes fun at that explanation immediately after but even if they acknowledge it as being silly they still could have come up with something better in my opinion they didn't even need to really set the sequel in the original house at all and really only included it for member berries in the case of Jeffrey Jones who unlike Alec Baldwin's rust shooting controversy was shooting entirely different kinds of loads specifically at little kids unlike the shoddy handwavy explanation we get for the mands the handling of Charley Deets is actually much better he's obviously given a more reduced role but he still serves a role in the film nonetheless it also makes up for Jeffrey Jones absence through clever usage of CGI and an animated sequence moving on to the main cast besides Michael Keaton obviously returning as beu we also have Winona Ryder and Katherine oara reprising their roles of lyad and delad Deets as well as every Zumer goth waifu Jenna Ortega who plays asts Lydia's daughter wow I would say Winona and Jenna carry the plot while Beetle juices subplot or really anything related to the afterlife in the beginning dragg the film down Lydia is now a professional Ghost Hunter who is literally haunted by bej and grief stricken by the loss of her first husband who is asid's Father she's being taken advantage of by her manipulative boyfriend and agent Rory who also forces her into marrying him while simultaneously pushing ashid away because she's unable to stand up for herself essentially her entire Arc is realizing that she's become what she hated Delia by selling out to Hollywood and not giving her daughter the proper time of day some people may interpret this as her being given Luke Skywalker treatment in tlj but I would say how she wound up toally tracks Lydia is established to be someone who is codependent and adding the fact that she didn't exactly grow up with healthy role models and something like this all becomes believable my major gripes are that a lot of the subs are irrelevant and poorly closed there are a bunch of unnecessary Subs in this movie that I felt like it was juggling too much at this point I'm going to start discussing spoilers and if you don't want to hear them here's the time stamp of where to skip to you had Lydia trying to come to grips with her trauma ASD finding closure with her dead father and repairing her relationship with her mom Delia dealing with the loss of her husband and be trying to avoid his ex-wife Dolores who has the power of big suck which allows her to kill the undead by sealing their souls oxymoronic I know on top of all that there's a de plot with Willam defo who is having fun in the RO at least looking for the wife and just hams up the movie in filler scenes before we get back to the main plot then at the end he just leaves after really not doing anything the entire time so we have all of these plot points stuffed into a movie that's 1 hour and 44 minutes in the runtime at times it felt like I was watching two entirely different movies with one being more interesting than the other I felt of the ones I listed Dolores subplot felt the most unnecessary given how little we see her throughout she gets built up a lot with her introduction early on and establish as being a big threat but the film pretty much forgets she exists for a majority of its runtime her main motivation is that she wants to give be juice the big suck in order to steal his soul for revenge and I guess that's it if her goal is to take over the afterlife I don't really see how be juice gets in the way of that it's never even really explained how she even gets her soul sucking Powers she just somehow knows that she has them from the very start instead of screen time dedicated to her I would have much preferred if we had more time dedicated to fleshing out the other characters particularly the other antagonist Rory and Jeremy Lydia's relationship with Rory seemed like an underdeveloped story as from the very start we see as a slime ball but Lydia is so blind that he needs to literally be drugged to tell her the truth to her face to acknowledge it his dialogue should have been cut down to make him more of a clear manipulative figure with his marriage scheme and perhaps even come up with some schemes to have Lydia kill to get her money his murder attempts could have been presented as a supernatural threat only to be revealed as Rory being the one attempting to kill her all along Jeremy is significantly worse than Rory though as he's essentially given a cardboard cutout of a personality with cheesy romance scenes with asterid only to be revealed as as a Twist villain brings her to the Soul Train Station then walks away telling her what he did for no reason only to be killed 5 minutes later and the entire plot thread with him is suddenly over he could have easily been more fleshed out such as a possible future look at ASD should Lydia choose to not start acting as a proper mother to her maybe he could have been man to be Juice's sidekick who he uses to L her Lydia in after Astrid make him a more sympathetic character like having his motivation be to pass on to be with his parents which be Ed dangles over his head and give become a heartfelt goodbye where he ends up passing on after redeeming himself a lot of people's perceptions of bej seem to have been altered by the cartoon because he's not a hero or even an anti-hero he's just a straight up bad guy so just let him act as a bad guy there's also some contrivances related to his plot like ashy conveniently not being able to tell that her dead boyfriend's parents were murder victims on account of them being Ren like NPCs this takes zero effort whatsoever to inform her that their son is a murderous psychopath Jeremy's plan also relied a lot on Lydia not coming to the house or either her or Ash knowing about his background there's also the issue of afterlife authorities just being completely non-existent throughout this entire ordeal with them somehow being able to detect be juice and Lydia bringing to the afterlife but not as and Jeremy I would have also liked Lydia's husband to be a more fleshed out character he just gets introduced out of the blue as an undead civil servant who by chance happens to be around when Ash is being taken away then this entire plethora just ends with him sitting down with Lydia and Ash to essentially talk them out of their respective trauma it's very rushed and feels like Tim buron was just trying to get the movie over with and of course no one brings any attention to the fact that he's a civil servant even though canonically to be a civil servant in the afterlife you have to end your own life this could have been a great plot Point revealing that Lydia blamed herself for her husband un living himself only for both her and ashy to get proper closure but of course that doesn't happen while we're on the subject of the sequel being inconsistent with its rules on how the afterlife operates you also have the tiny heads entering the world of the living with seemingly no consequences and knowledge of the afterlife is apparently made aware to the entire world at Lydia's wedding which doesn't seem to have any consequences by the end whatsoever the major point of the original is that the afterlife is a bureaucratic hellscape that you cannot escape from there is a handbook for the recently deceased and all so it's strictly a rule-based environment beju found a loophole or some way to get power in spite of this strict rules-based environment so if they want to do a sequel then they should focus on how you achieve these legal loopholes show us the rules show us why bej specifically has powers while other residents of the afterlife don't don't just throw away the rules because they become inconvenient for you that's just lazy something that stood out to me was how vastly different in tone this was from the first film this film is a lot darker than the first and I don't necessarily mean that as a bad thing but it does describe the ending quite a bit which I didn't really like it honestly ends on two G of a note which runs counter to everything the film was building up to Sure Lydia will always always have to deal with be juice but there is something worth celebrating in that he at least won't be passed on to ASD because of Lydia and she now doesn't have to deal with him alone anymore instead we get a sort of sequel bait ending with Lydia still suffering as she always has from the very start it feels almost pointless I think what made the first one good is that despite the otherworldly nature the plot points were very relatable it addressed the feelings of discomfort you'd have over someone moving to your home feeling culturally displaced in your own Community obnoxious yepy culture which isn't to say that there aren't relatable issues that characters go through here but again they just get muddled with what the film throws at you the first seem to rely on dialogue humor were this strive for physical humor if it had a stronger script with a more specific theme such as having the Deeds family members deal with loss in their own ways only to apply what they've learned to resolve the story that it would have been a much better film personally my favorite scene in the movie would be near the end where Delia says goodbye to lyan and ASD all three of the actresses do a fantastic job of conveying shock confusion sadness to acceptance and heartfelt goodbyes in a believable way while showing how far each of them have come from suffering through their mutual feelings of loss and can now properly deal with it it's a beautiful scene it could have hit even harder for me had each of the characters gone through their own respective arcs learning a Core lesson it's still a great scene as is but it's also a reminder that this film could have been much better executed overall it's an okay sequel that manages to be fun despite its problems the cast clearly wanted to be there and deliver with their performances for the most part Ryder Kon and Ohara were fantastic they opted to use practical effects over CGI in most places and more jokes landed for me than missed if you're a fan of the original and want to see something fun with your friends or family then I would say this is for you overall i' give it a 6 out of 10 closer to a five than a [Music] seven thanks for watching guys I have some projects I'm working on that I plan to release at some point but right now I figured I'd test the wires by releasing a quick review to start getting some content out think of this as a sort of pilot to the channel to give you an idea of what the typical format will be if you have any feedback or advice to give me I would love to hear As I Am brand new to this fear if you like the video please consider giving a like subscribing and following me on social media thanks again and have a good one [Music]