Betelgeuse Part Deuce!

Who thought this was ever going to happen? They were talking about it for years and years, I wrote it off as a pipe dream. But here we are, 36 years later, and they finally did it. They made Tim Burton great again.

The first movie is great. Weird as hell, original, and a promising start for Tim Burton. He channeled his filmmaking process at that time to make a very practical effects oriented movie. Finally, a Tim Burton movie with very little CGI. The story is a lot of fun, too.

Beetlejuice himself only has so many minutes of screentime, in which most of his scenes are set in the afterlife as a service worker. Michael Keaton rules. You can tell he loves every minute of being such a douchy character.

Most of the movie is set in the real world, and we're given a grander scope of the town. It's a great setting. Autumnal and set primarily on Halloween. Winona is some solid glue to entry, as is her annoying mother Catherine O'Hara. Jeffrey Jones couldn't be in it for reasons we'll not get into here, but they did include his character in a pretty hilarious way. Jenna Ortega is obviously great. She's a wonderful scream queen as of late, and this movie is slightly closer to the horror genre than the original. More life and death stakes. And afterlife stakes.

The Day-O song is only briefly homaged, thank God, but there happens to be an equally hilarious musical number in there. I got plenty of laughs throughout. Willem Dafoe is an actor in the afterlife, acting like a police officer for some reason, and he cracks me up. Danny DeVito is only in one scene, but he's welcome in every goddamn movie ever made. Justin Theroux is the equivalent of Glenn Shadix's character in the original. A phony psychic foil.

I wont say much about Monica Belluci's character, but Monica Belluci is fucking Tim Burton now. That's probably important to the story for some reason. It's strange how a weirdo-looking creep like him attracts women like Belluci and Lisa Marie. And Helena, if you're into zombies.

Basically, everything about BJ2 comes together really well. I think everyone involved had fun making it, and it's a return to form for Tim Burton. This movie didn't even have Helena Bonham Carter or Johnny Depp in it!

#Review