Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

I finally got around to watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. I'd been waiting for this sequel for many years; I think it was a long time ago that it was first promised. 

I'm not sure I can do this movie justice, especially while trying not to give away too many spoilers, but...

It's been a long (long) time since I've watched the original, and I don't have a great memory, but I have the impression this movie has a more complex plot. I was thinking for most of the movie that they tried hard, and Keaton's performance was on par with the original, and a lot of the special effects and style matched the original, but that somehow I liked the original better, that this movie just didn't have the same charm somehow. 

But then I got to the Macarthur Park wedding scene. That scene was a masterpiece. I love a good mind-bending piece of media (case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLGj0JMDT1Q, though maybe it only works if Super Mario Bros. 3 was an integral part of your childhood), and Beetlejuice et al. dancing to and singing Macarthur Park in the original singer's voice was truly surreal. The inherent beauty of real music, and in particular this song, which is one of my favorites, elevated the scene to a sublime level, which provided mind-melting contrast given Beetlejuice's stylishly filthy, demonic nature. This scene made the movie for me. 

There was also no shortage of unexpected twists and turns in this movie, the best ones being right at the end. One of them was assumed to be a wholesome and beautiful moment that suddenly became very defiled in an absurd and humorous way, and the other seemed to indicate that maybe Beetlejuice hadn't died in the end after all.

There were two parts of this movie that made me laugh out loud. The first was when Beetlejuice swore to keep a promise on his mother's grave, and then suddenly, unexpectedly by him, his shirt caught on fire. The second was when Astrid (Jenna Ortega's character) and Lydia end up in the desert/no man's land of the afterlife, and Astrid sees Saturn and concludes that they're on one of its moons, and blurts out, "I swear, the afterlife is so random!" (If you see this movie, or probably even if you've seen the original, you'll see how that line was a bit of meta-humor.)

And speaking of Jenna Ortega, it's always a pleasure seeing her in anything, as she has such a cute, cool-looking face as well as a cool persona, so having her in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was a real boon for the movie.

If I had any complaints, one was that the characters weren't astonished and/or reactive enough in response to discovering certain realities or turns of events, but that's typical of movies; but even more forgivably, it was probably part of the intentional aesthetic of the Beetlejuice franchise. Or at least the lack-of-astonishment part probably was; there was one part where a beloved family member died permanently, and the family hardly reacted with any emotion at all. (I guess the blow was softened by the fact that it was clear that the person would be hanging out in the afterlife from then on out, but still.)

Another complaint would be that I never understood why Willem Dafoe played an actor playing an afterlife crime unit agent, but that fake crime unit agent had a practical role with real consequences. It didn't seem to make much sense, but maybe I just missed some important plot point there. Or maybe the movie just doesn't have to make total sense, and that element did add a certain amount of flare or colorfulness after all. I had some other complaints, but they're too minor to mention here.

Overall, I think this movie was worth watching, even though it may have lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that the first one had.