Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy this movie, but I believe that most of my enjoyment came from seeing my childhood characters on the silver screen once again. I hate to admit it, but I did grade this movie on a curve. And I laughed at moments that were meant to be funny, but in reality – wasn’t.
Movie sequels are tricky. So, if you’re going to write a part two of any iconic character, you better bring in the big guns. And that’s precisely what they did. Three top gun screenwriters were brought in to craft this story:
- Seth Grahame-Smith – The author of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, multiple Lego movies, just to name a few. The Lincoln Movie, by the way, was incredibly good.
- Alfred Gough and Miles Millar – Their credits include Lethal Weapon 4, Spider-Man 2 (story only), I am Number Four, Wednesday, Smallville, Shanghai Noon
Despite the A-list writing team, the A-list director, and the A-list talent, Beetlejuice, unfortunately, isn’t an A movie. It’s average.
Why?
Well, in my opinion, you don’t have a clear antagonist. The evil characters in Beetlejuice are all very strong, formidable characters that can drive a story, but in the end, they are easily defeated without any cleverness from our protagonists.
In the first Beetlejuice, you had one main antagonist, and that was Beetlejuice. In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, you have Beetlejuice, Jeremy, and Delores, and it pushes the story and our characters in too many directions. Now, having multiple antagonists is very often done for a TV series. For example, you can have a main antagonist that drives the characters throughout a 10-episodic web series. Then, for each episode, you can have an antagonist that takes our characters off their game and onto a new adventure. But to have three antagonists, and probably more (if you count unhealthy agendas/also don’t want to give away too much), it’s just too much for a 100-page script to handle.
There were just too many good ideas for this sequel, and Tim Burton couldn’t settle on one to follow. And what’s the result? Chaos. Very little character development.
Do I recommend seeing it? Yes.
Is it better than the first? No.
Is it fun? I guess.
Would I buy the stream? Yes, but only because it’s Beetlejuice. The cartoon, by the way, is much better.
By the way, it’s interesting what Tim Burton did to Jeffrey Jones’s character. Not sure if you know this, but Jones plead guilty to possession of child porn after hiring a 14-year-old boy to pose in erotic snapshots. Burton just didn’t write his character out of the movie, he – well he – watch the movie.
GRADE: C
Steve Young
