Can you ever really go home again? Nothing is ever as good as it was when you were younger, but that’s because you had the shield of adolescence to protect you. Luckily, when it comes to movies, as long as you’ve got access to a copy of a film you love, you can always go back to it, no matter what stories come next. Sure, you can’t control what the creatives related to the project do or say that might color how you view the work, but, typically, once the work is made, it’s done and time-locked. You’re not, though, which means that coming back to a story often means re-evaluating it, especially when a sequel is released, such as the long-gestating Beetlejuice Beetlejuice 2024 A.D., stylized as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. With original director Tim Burton (Big Fish) returning to the helm and original actors Winona Ryder (Edward Scissorhands), Catherine O’Hara (Frankenweenie), and Michael Keaton (Batman) back in costume, it’s no surprise that the film made over $400 million worldwide as audiences longed to return to a stranger and more unusual (albeit more comfortable) time in their lives. But just like going back home as an adult comes with its own awkwardness, so, too, does Beetlejuice Beetlejuice reveal that sometimes we make things too complicated for our own good. On the bright side, if you’re a fan of the follow-up, the home release includes nearly 80 minutes of behind-the-scenes materials, as well as a feature-length commentary track with Burton himself.
Far Left: Winona Ryder as Lydia in Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh. © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
In the time since the Maitland and the Deetz families collided in Winter River, Connecticut, their differences introducing self-proclaimed bio-exorcist Betelgeuse (Keaton) into their lives, young Lydia (Ryder) has grown up to have a child of her own, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), and has used her powers of communicating with the dead to become a television personality. With the death of Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones), Lydia, Astrid, and step-mother Delia (O’Hara) return to Winter River to say goodbye, creating an opportunity that The Juice has been waiting decades for. What neither Betelgeuse nor the Deetzes realize is that there’s another specter on the prowl who has even the Ghost with the Most desperate to escape.
If you’re looking for a spoiler-free exploration of the film, head over to the initial theatrical release review. Moving forward, specific details of the film may be explored.
L-R: Director Tim Burton and Monica Bellucci on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh. © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
In a rewatch of the film, the strengths shine through even more, but so do the issues. There’s no denying the sublime production design overseen by Mark Scruton (The Informer), visual effects overseen by Mathew Krentz (The New Mutants; The Kitchen), and the entire makeup department who make a meal out of the background players that’ll have you rewatch the film merely so you pause to examine and identify the newly-dead in the waiting room and others throughout the bureaucratic underworld. Seeing Ryder, O’Hara, and Keaton, of course, is an absolute delight as they each slide right back into the personas with incredible ease, the energy that comes from them making elements of the film worth the ride. Of the new cast, the best of them are Ortega and Conti as teen love-interest/treacherous ghost Jeremy who both fit so neatly into this world and understand that a certain amount of theatricality is necessary to blend in. Neither of them gives a *big* performance, so much as they each come with the right amount of heat so that one believes that Ortega’s Astrid would be the one to undo the deal struck between her mother and Betelgeuse and that Conti’s Jeremy (for those who couldn’t see it coming miles away) would make such a mustache-twirling turn. Even Willem Dafoe’s Wolf Jackson, officer on the afterlife police force, is an absolute delight, walking the line between human-who-doesn’t-get-that-they’re-dead-and-can-evolve and dedicated-to-his-role-as-police-officer-as-second-chance. In this case, he may be one of the few ACAB exceptions as he truly does seek to keep the peace. One of the few brilliant details in the script by Miles Millar (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) and Alfred Gough (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor), based on a story by Millar, Gough, and Seth Grahame-Smith (Dark Shadows), is making Betelgeuse a scab operating the caseworker lines while a strike is happening, thereby putting him in a position to take advantage of the newly-deceased on a scale he couldn’t in the prior tale and hock his bio-exorcism skills. It really shows just how much of a self-interested POD Betelgeuse is and it’s something you have to slowdown to notice as we only get this information 38 minutes into the film and only if you are able to read the front-page news of the paper he’s reading before the shot ends. This helps answer *a lot* of questions regarding why there’s such a backup in the waiting room, how Betelgeuse could get any kind of power position in the afterlife, and creates the connective tissue necessary for how Betelgeuse could know the workings of the bureaucratic building in order to help Lydia stop Jeremy and save Astrid. But that’s it, folks. That’s the good in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
L-R: Catherine O’Hara as Delia, Jenna Ortega as Astrid, Winona Ryder as Lydia, and Justin Theroux as Rory in Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh. © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
On a rewatch, the waste that is Monica Bellucci (Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Shoot’Em Up) continues to confound and frustrate. Bellucci’s Delores is introduced as this absolute menace, hell-bent on revenge and hunting Betelgeuse as she causes mayhem throughout the afterlife looking for him. Her existence in the film is part of his motivation to escape in this film, which provides a more interesting motivation than before. But then, by the time she arrives in the film, at the story’s climax, she’s gotten rid of in mere minutes via sandworm. She affects the story very little, otherwise, providing respites from Justin Theroux’s (Zoolander; Violet) obnoxious Rory that one couldn’t be more grateful for, to be sure, but that’s not enough of a reason to include the character. Yes, it provides a window of opportunity to get to backstory on Betelgeuse prior to death, but did it really reveal anything the audience needed to better understand the character? Not even a little. Instead, all of the machinations feel like padding surrounding what should’ve been a more prominent story involving Lydia-Delia-Astrid as the surviving Deetz women, the complexity of grief when you know the afterlife is real, the resentment Astrid feels regarding Lydia keeping Astrid from her father resulting in Astrid’s denial of her mother’s abilities, and, of course, Jeremy. Given all that Delia and Charles went through in the first film, it’s so odd that Delia doesn’t reenforce the reality of Lydia’s gifts to Astrid or have even one scene with her granddaughter in which she reminds Astrid of the tales she would’ve been told in her youth. It’s a prime opportunity to make something else about herself, yet, the only time we really see Delia acknowledge the first film is when she and Lydia bolt the attic door. For the briefest of moments, audiences get the chance to see what Delia might do when given the chance to react vulnerably and it makes less sense that the script wouldn’t take advantage of it. Then, of course, there’s the moment when Lydia calls for Betelgeuse to get help and we finally get a Lydia who isn’t afraid of him in order to save her daughter, a sequence that demonstrates a version of this film that remembered it’s best when it’s strange and unusual instead of rote. This strength is later undercut by having Lydia be afraid during the musical number instead of pissed off given that she’d been through this before with Betelgeuse and should be used to his schtick. But, at the very least, via throwaway line, we know that Maxie Dean (Robert Goulet) is still alive. So at least there’s that?
L-R: Actor Jenna Ortega and Director Tim Burton on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh. © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
On the brightest side, Warner Bros. Pictures offers a lot of materials for audiences to explore regarding the making of the film. Across seven featurettes, audiences are given a backstage pass to listen to the cast and crew talk about everything from returning to the characters and the world to explaining where these characters are now, as well as the technical approaches to make a lot of the gags work. On the one hand, we get to see true brilliance at work as the craftspeople explain the layering of tech and the design processes that helped bring things like the life-sucker deflation effect, baby Betelgeuse, and the *many* background figures, to reality. On the other, we also learn that there’s quite a bit of on-set improv going on, which may explain how something in a scene might be fun to do, but may not work as part of a larger cohesive work. It does, however, confirm that there wasn’t enough of Ortega and O’Hara in scenes together, which is a crime unto itself.
L-R: Winona Ryder as Lydia and Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse in Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
As WB Home Entertainment did provide a 4K UHD edition for this review, it’s worth pointing out something strange regarding the on-disc presentation: inconsistent bitrates in inconsistent places. Ordinarily, a CG-heavy film will have a drop in bitrate when computer effects are utilized the most. For instance, scenes in Twisters (2024) involving twisters will see a drop in bitrate compared to natural weather scenes because there’s a different data load to process. Of course, the amount of data storage available on a disc can impact this and the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice disc does have nearly 80 minutes of materials taking up room, but the bitrate more often drops in sequences like Astrid riding her bike through Winter River before meeting Jeremy. That scene dropped to 40 Mbps (the max for standard HD) whereas scenes in the afterlife often maintained around 80 Mbps (max 4K being 120) — it quite literally makes no sense. There’s no actual drop in visual quality that anyone not tracking the bitrate will notice, but it’s an odd occurrence. In fact, the visual elements are quite strong with the neons packing quite a punch, while the blacks are nice an inky, which does translate to scenes being darker than they were in the theater, but that shouldn’t be an issue for modern home theaters trying to present the most accurate picture possible.
L-R: Director Tim Burton and actor Michael Keaton on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh. © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The way that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ends, a massive door is left open for a sequel that audiences seem to be hungry for after the success of this film. Personally, that cliffhanger feels like it would’ve worked better earlier in the film to help perpetuate the notion that Lydia is haunted by Betelgeuse to really drive home her internal disquiet. Instead, in the way it’s used, it implies that Lydia remains afraid, which goes against what her character arc was seeking to accomplish here. If there is another film, may it be final so that this fictional chapter can officially close and, if we’re lucky, it’ll be a proper ending sans-copious fan service and more back to basics like the original.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Special Features:
- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Commentary by director Tim Burton (1:44:40)
- The Juice is Loose! The Making of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (27:37)
- The Ghost with the Most: Beetlejuice Returns (8:34)
- Meet the Deetz (6:52)
- Handbook for the Recently Deceased (12:08)
- Shrinkers, Shrinkers Everywhere! (6:27)
- An Animated Afterlife: The Stop-Motion Art of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (9:15)
- ‘Til Death Do Us Park (7:54)
Available on VOD and digital October 8th, 2024.
Available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD November 19th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Warner Bros. Pictures Beetlejuice Beetlejuice webpage.
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Categories: Home Release, Recommendation
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