Is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice worth watching?
To summarize the story in short, the Deetz family returns to their old home after Lydia’s father, Charles, passes away. Lydia’s teenage daughter, Astrid, eventually opens a portal to the underworld. Many problems come out of this, and that’s how the conflict in the story begins.
From the moment the movie began, I knew this was going to be a letdown. The plot took too long to develop, and the jokes were corny and forced. It started to pick up after Astrid opened the portal. By then, the movie started to become more interesting, but before all of that, it was boring.
The casting, at least, was pretty good. But when it came to the acting, it wasn’t so great. Especially the performance from Winona Ryder as Lydia. Her expressions were over the top. On the other hand, Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) was well played. He was funny, chaotic, and overall kept my attention.
One of the best parts of the original Beetlejuice is the family dinner scene with everyone dancing to the “Banana Boat Song.” I’m sure anyone who’s seen Beetlejuice should know it. Towards the ending of the second movie, they try to do something similar, but it just doesn’t work. I didn’t find the song catchy, and the dancing wasn’t fun–it was just very lame.
I felt like they overdid the weirdness in this film at times. It often came off as more gross than weird. Like the scenes with puking or giving birth to some demon baby. At that point, I was looking over to see if anyone had the same reaction I did.
And without giving too much away, the sandworms appear at the ending, which I thought was unnecessary. It felt so obvious when they wanted to reference something from the first movie, and the context of why the sandworms were there was just a stupid idea, in my opinion.
No way does this movie compare to the original Beetlejuice. There was just a lot going on and there were some plot lines that I think weren’t necessary. While this isn’t a terrible movie, it also could’ve been a lot better.
