The green-haired demon is back! Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opens
Tim Burton’s sequel to his cult classic 1988 movie ,Beetlejuice, adds some fun and silly moments to the original, while actively trying to avoid being called dated.
In recent years, we’ve been getting reboots, sequels, and even musical sequels, to movies from long ago. So, perhaps it was just a matter of time before Hollywood dug its claws into Beetlejuice to revive it for a quick cash grab.
At the Venice Film Festival Tim Burton vehemently said, “I was not out to do a big sequel for money. I wanted to make this for very personal reasons,” , He said he felt lost in the movie industry prior to finally jumping into the directing and filming of the double-titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
It has been reported that a sequel was in talks for years, but Tim Burton had maintained his stance that it wouldn’t happen if Michael Keaton wasn’t the man playing the eccentrically gross Betelgeuse himself.
There have been very mixed reviews surrounding the movie and whether it tarnishes or adds to the legacy of the movie. In Tim Burton’s endeavour to try and stick as close to the original feeling of the movie as possible, he failed to acknowledge the ever-growing humour of today, with some jokes throughout the movie feeling cheap and old, some fans say.
The sequel is set in present day, with our main lady, Winona Ryder, playing Lydia Deetz, sporting the exact same spikey fringe hair she did in the first movie. She’s a TV personality. using her ability as a psychic mediator to help others on a show called Ghost House.
She’s no longer her angsty fiery teen self, instead replaced with a vulnerable and haunted version. Her boyfriend, played by Justin Theroux, uses his ‘woke’ therapeutic way of speaking to hide his narcissistic and obnoxious personality, which flies over the vulnerable Lydia.
Her stepmother Delia, played by Catherine O’Hara, even comments on this new, pitiful version of Lydia, going as far as to ask where the fiery version of her went. Though Lydia herself is no longer the angsty teen, her teenage daughter Astrid, played by Jenna Ortega, has proudly stormed up to the mantle and has taken her mother’s place.
Delia’s ventures in the art world, which we’ve seen since the first movie, have finally borne some fruit. Despite her weird and quirky ways, she seems to have made a name for herself, while relying on Lydia.
An unfortunate tragedy brings the misshapen family back to their old stomping ground of Winter River. This gives our classical weasel, Beetlejuice, a chance to get his foot back into the lives of the Deetz family and finally get ‘his’ Lydia to marry him. IMDB critics rate the movie seven out of ten, while fans have been arguing it out.
“From someone who saw the movie when it was first released, it’s definitely a good movie to see for nostalgia’s sake,” says Garrett O’Hara, a long-time fan who went to see it in the Lighthouse cinema in Smithfield. “But having said that, I wouldn’t pay to see it again. A lot of hype was built up around the movie, but after finally seeing the movie, all I could think about it was, ‘it’s okay’. It wasn’t exciting, but it wasn’t boring either.”
While some fans aren’t sure how to feel about the movie’s special effects and CGI, some others took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to share long, excited tweets.
Despite fans having mixed reactions to the movie, there seems to be something they can all agree on – nostalgia.
Scott Kearns, who came to see the movie with his wife, says, “This movie is just a bunch of nostalgia. You get to see everyone in the same setting after so long since the first movie. They tried to keep the movie really close to the old one. Sometimes a little too much, especially with jokes. But it was definitely a fan watch.”
The Lighthouse Cinema is showing the movie until October 3rd.
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