I, Ava Lenerz, am a huge fan of movies and as such I am beginning a movie review blog about some of the newest movies I’ve seen.
For my first entry of the school year, I’m reviewing the 28th movie I saw in theaters this year, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to the 1988 film. I recommend watching the first movie before seeing this one, but it is not necessary.
There are a couple small spoilers, so if you don’t want to know anything about the plot, stop here.
To start, it was nice to see so many returning characters, along with some new characters, such as Lydia Deetz’ daughter Astrid, played by Jenna Ortega.
Jenna Ortega has been in the acting industry for a while but blew up after the release of the TV series Wednesday in 2022, and she did not disappoint in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice either.
Returning, we had Catherine Ohara, Winona Ryder, and, obviously, Michael Keaton as the titular character, but we were missing a few faces.
The first being the actor for Charles Deetz, but for PR reasons they didn’t want him back. However, they still included his character in good taste.
More importantly, it was missing the Maitlands, played by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin, who according to the original movie were supposed to be trapped in the house for the next 125 years. However, with their age and Baldwin’s recent lawsuit, it makes sense their characters didn’t return, but the excuse given for their absence was underwhelming.
The plot was very funny and entertaining to watch. That said, it was overly complicated.
It tried to include too many half-baked plots and characters instead of sticking to simple and high quality.
For instance, it was interesting to learn more of Beetlejuice’s backstory, but his wife Delores didn’t add anything to the story: if she had been removed, the main plot would have been the same. It just took time away from developing other characters.
On a different note, in a thrilling climax, we had Lydia back in the red wedding gown for an exciting dance scene, reminiscent of the original dinner dance sequence. Though, in the first film, the song and dance served a purpose within the plot-not so much in the sequel.
The return of some stop motion-in true Tim Burton fashion-was fun to see. Not to mention, the change from PG to PG-13 was a good and necessary switch.
Overall, I enjoyed seeing this with my family and would recommend it to people wanting to see these classic characters again. It isn’t the best movie ever, but it wasn’t trying to be, and that’s one of the great things about Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetl…