Review: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
You could say it's same old, same old.
Think about your favorite musical artist still rocking in their twilight years. Maybe it’s AC/DC or the Stones or Aerosmith. For example purposes, I’ll say mine is Paul McCartney. I liked his last record, 2020’s self-titled McCartney III. It’s got a great guitar ditty in ‘Long Tailed Winter Bird,’ a beautiful anthem in ‘Find My Way,’ and there’s a case to be made that it’s the best overall record out of his three eponymous offerings. But when I saw him in concert a year later, I didn’t want to hear any of the crap. I wanted ‘Get Back’ and ‘Let It Be’ and ‘Live and Let Die.’ Play the hits.
Why then do we ask for unbridled, lifelong creativity from our filmmakers? Tim Burton went on an unrivaled decade-plus run starting in the late ’80s, where he ripped off nothing but triple platinum records, from the original Beetlejuice to his two Batman films to Ed Scissorhands to Ed Wood to Ed Bloom. Just about everything on this side of the millennia has ranged from truly terrible to just fine and now, all these years later, he’s back to playing the hits in a sequel to the first movie that felt singularly Burtonian, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, now playing in theaters.