Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (film): It's good, but a bit of a letdown for fans of the original.

This isn't to say that this film should be skipped, it really shouldn't because it is an inventive thing that got started in 1988 and then got shelved for nearly 40 years before they went back to the drawing board to try to think of ways to make a sequel to this surprise hit.

One part of me thinks that they should have just left the past alone but another part of me quite appreciates that they would have a try at bringing back some late 80's nostalgia and not clutter the production up with too many modern-day CGI tricks. Parts of the movie look fake, but that was the sort of technology that we were dealing with in the late 80's and therefore, I am glad they kept the old-school look to it even though they certainly could have made it look more modern and realistic if they wanted to.

Some places refer to it as Beetlejuice 2 and other as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice but it doesn't matter. It is the same movie.

We see most of the characters return from the original and that was nice to see even though many of them are quite old and one of them is dead in real life. So I guess this was a convenient plot element because the reason why the "gang" gets back together is because of the fact that father/grandfather/husband has died in the movie and they need to get back together at the original house from the first film. For people that saw and enjoyed the original, this will be a fund trip down memory lane.

When they are doing the flyby of the city in some scenes, they use an obviously fake replica of the city that was a central part of the first film and in turn, this one as well. Beetlejuice or Betelgeuse still is able to reside in this replica city and people can, just like in the first film, bring him into the real world or vice versa by saying his name three times. I quite enjoyed Winona Ryder's "Lydia" reaction to when someone says the name. Even though the original film was a comedy, the idea here is that Lydia has been traumatized by the events of the first film and she passes this fear onto her bold daughter, Astrid. I'm sure many people will get great joy out of the fact that Astrid is played by now famous Jenna Ortega, who played "Wednesday" in the famous and entertaining series with the same name.

The filming is done well, with a very Tim Burton style that made the first movie so iconic. Thankfully they were able to get the musical style of Danny Elfman in it as well. These are very identifiable and fun characteristics that I was first introduced to as a child and they remain fun to me to this day.

The overall story here is the weakest part of the entire thing and it is, dare I say, a bit boring. There are a lot of things going on all at once both in the spirit world and the real world and they are only kind of loosely connected to one another. They are aiming for comedy over horror here and that is something that you need to accept right at the start if you are going to have any chance of truly enjoying this.

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For me, I thought it was a pretty decent movie but it is something that I was always going to be disappointed with because with rare exceptions like Maverick I think that legendary films from a long time ago are better left alone rather than revisited.

that being said, I think that most people will find this entertaining whether or not they have actually seen the 1988 original.

Should I watch it?

I think that yes you should but not in any sort of urgent way. If you have an Amazon Prime or AppleTV+ account it is included in the library as part of the subscription. Otherwise you will have to pay to rent or buy it. While I found this movie mostly entertaining and visually fun, I wouldn't pay anything extra to see it.

Most people will like this even though the story, to be honest, is stupid and disjointed. Just appreciate it for what it is and I think that most people will get some sort of enjoyment out of the surprisingly inexpensive ($100 million) spectacle. It's not legendary, but I don't think anyone really thought that it was going to be.