By Haelis Amundgaard
Staff Reporter
On opening weekend, I entered Hollywood Cinemark and in a rush of excitement, chanted the name of “Beetlejuice” three times. Everyone in the crowded theater around me was suddenly whisked away to the mind of Tim Burton. Unfortunately the whimsical world that encapsulated audiences in 1988, was gone.
What took its place was almost more frightening than the unpredictable fictional demon himself; a real life Frankenstein’s monster, cobbled together from loose, empty plot threads, revivified nostalgia and the corpse of a severely beaten horse.
When I left the theater that night, I heard a man behind me exclaim, “Was that the end of the movie!?” And I couldn’t help but realize how, just like the stitchwork creature of the 1931 film, the Frankenstein’s monster of Tim Burton’s creation was hollow.
This isn’t to say the film had no redeeming qualities and wasn’t enjoyable to some degree. Michael Keaton is an electrifying actor; even 36 years later, it feels like Juice never left. While Beetlejuice was sanitized of his timeless, shockingly enjoyable sleaze, he still manages to knock gags out of the park and maintain some consistency with the original character.
Jenna Ortega fits in seamlessly to the setting, as though the setting had been designed around her, just as it was around Winona Ryder in ‘88.
Speaking of Lydia Deetz herself, it appears as though Ms. Deetz was living on a different planet, with how phoned-in her performance is. At least she dignified her existence in the film, though, as several other characters flat out did not need to exist. Beetlejuice’s ex-wife is unceremoniously dumped into the film, ignored for half of it and then ends the movie not with a nice bow, but with an ugly roll of duct tape.
The visual style and creativity that defined the original movie is majoritively intact, fortunately enough for this film’s saving grace, even if it’s just a nostalgic facade.
Trying to breach that facade just shows how empty the film really is. The music was especially egregious, even Danny Elfman’s original score feels hollow, not to mention the 15 mediocre pop songs stapled clumsily into scenes.
Of the four main plot threads, none of them have any more depth than a plastic backyard pool. Where the original was tightly written, with humorous gags and an almost picturesque ending, calling the new film ‘undercooked’ would be a little generous.
The script lives a jekyll-hyde life of being half-baked and still convoluted. It feels more like a series of Beetlejuice themed skits, that would have worked much better if it spent six more months in the writers room, or if it was changed to an anthology altogether.
Burton beats the horses’ corpse of Juice-themed nostalgia for an hour and forty-four minutes, and all the audience gains are a handful of off-the-wall gags and a pinstripe colored excuse for ticket sales and merchandising.
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