Carole-Anne Morris, Editor-in-Chief  

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024), a sequel 36 years in the making, hit theaters Sept. 6. The film’s stellar box office success (it’s the second-highest grossing September release ever) confirms what we already know: the nostalgia business is booming.   

As an older millennial who has watched the first installment at least twice a year for the past three decades, I was ready for this sequel. However, I’ve been burned before by my high hopes for sequels to movies that I love. The one that hurt the most was probably Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009), a weirdly red-pilled caper that felt like a buddy cop flick. This was a significant tonal disconnect from the first installment’s grit and its interest in the concept of destiny. I still resent Troy Duffy for it.    

So, like any well-adjusted adult, I’ve learned to temper my expectations, especially since I’m part of a major target audience for the nostalgia mill. We’re all corporate targets at the end of the day, so we’d do well to remember Dwight K. Schrute’s poignant observation that nostalgia is “one of the greatest human weaknesses, second only to the neck.”    

Having been duly warned and prepared by previous letdowns, I went to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice on opening day, and my only expectation? Witnessing my favorite bio-exorcist back in action! But Michael Keaton’s energy isn’t quite the same as it was in 1988; he’s lost some of his swagger, and there are times when this translates very poorly for Beetlejuice — a character who is 99% swagger. Nonetheless, Keaton gets the job done. I even laughed out loud at one of Beetlejuice’s one-liners, uttered in that vaguely twangy cowboy cadence we know and love as he pulls a lever and opens a trap door to hell underneath one of the film’s minor baddies.   

Speaking of baddies, I was curious about what kind of havoc Delores (Monica Bellucci) would wreak. Beetlejuice’s powerful, vengeful ex back to cause some chaos? The girl power possibilities! But the character is under-utilized; she’s a woman scorned, looking to settle a score, but beyond some brief flashbacks, we don’t learn much about her. She inhales a few souls during her rampage, but she’s easily dealt with near the end, and that’s about the extent of her presence in the film — overall, an underwhelming villain (and just another of Burton’s corpse brides). 

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice attempts to expand a major premise from the first installment: a bureaucratically red-taped afterlife. But the sequel’s exploration of this world seems gimmicky, not creative. Beetlejuice is now in middle management, for example, working a soul-sucking desk job, presumably out of the bio-exorcism business. Isn’t that hilarious?! It seems we’re expected to think so, but for me, Beetlejuice’s new line of work felt more like an obvious ploy getting us inside an otherwise inaccessible world. At one point, Beetlejuice literally engineers a backdoor entrance from the land of the living to his office in the land of the dead —convenient, eh? 

There’s also a law enforcement arm of this bureaucracy headed by Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe). In this The Year of Our Lord 2024, I’m just not sure we need any more zany police procedurals – especially in a Beetlejuice sequel. The bit feels tired. Jackson is a shallow compilation of noir and hard-boiled tropes that audiences will instantly recognize (his dedicated secretary, a lady with a nasty throat wound, brings him lots of coffees which he drinks vigorously). But since he’s played by Dafoe, he’s fun to watch.    

Other tropes aren’t as fun. Lydia’s (Winona Ryder) daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) is mad at mommy and makes it known…many times over. Yawn. The film seems a bit obsessed with this storyline but doesn’t do anything noteworthy with it. Lydia’s trauma from the events of the first installment and from losing her husband seem, to me at least, much more fertile ground for exploration, but the film subordinates these matters to the moody teenager schtick. Catherine O’Hara as Delia is genuinely funny, though, and she helps break up some of the manufactured, boring tension between Lydia and Astrid.    

Now, I know what you are wondering: Is there another compulsory song and dance number? Yes, there is. Is it worthy of its shrimpy “Day-O” predecessor? I’ll let you decide.   

While there seemed to be some missed opportunities, I’d say that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is worth the watch. It’s colorful and visually striking (which we’ve come to expect from a Tim Burton flick), and the great Danny Elfman returns as maestro of the film score — on these counts, it holds up well against the first installment.    

For me, questions remain. What exactly happened to the Maitlands? (Lydia tells us in passing that they’re no longer in the house, that they found a “loophole” and “moved on”). Why is Beetlejuice tied to that Winter River model? Is that flattened roadkill guy still delivering paperwork in the afterlife? Why is the Handbook for the Recently Deceased so confusing? (It reads like stereo instructions!)  

But the most intriguing question of all is, why are we so compelled by nostalgia? We acquire the merch and pay for sequel tickets only to be left wanting answers, wanting something different, wanting something more. Schopenhauer tells us that nostalgia is an aesthetic experience which provides a particular kind of escapism, and I suppose that makes sense. So go ahead, play your role as a tiny cog in the nostalgia mill and see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice — just be ready for some hacky tropes and (dare I say it?) lazy writing.