A Scathing ‘Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice' Test Reaction

Last month, Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice” test-screened, twice, in California and the reactions coming out of it seemed to be decent. I hadn’t heard or read anything glowing, but the person I had spoken to seemed to mildly enjoy it. A trailer was released yesterday.

Here’s another reaction. I talked to this person last night, they were surprised by how bad the film turned out. I should mention that he’s a big fan of the 1988 original and thought the sequel failed to deliver on the promise of that classic:

So bad. Keaton is in good form, but the movie around him is garbage. I mean look at that trailer… Winona has the same exact haircut as a 50 year old that she had as a teenage goth. Those kids at the funeral are actually singing Day-O in the film at Jeffrey Jones’ funeral because, of course, why not, it was in the first film. Catherine O Hara seemed to be playing her character from Schitts Creek. Just a mediocre story and trying too hard to do callbacks to the original instead of making it its own thing. Lots of story threads go nowhere, Dafoe and Bellucci are wasted. I usually like Justin Theroux, but he was so annoying in this. Some of the visuals looked cool, but there weren’t as many practical effects as publicized by Burton. Lots of family drama. Some of it looked cheap, but sure it will look better when it comes out.  There are a ton of those shrunken head people in the film, cause why not, just throwing in another thing from the original. There is a baby Beetlejuice… I didn’t even have high expectations, but was definitely disappointed. I love original Beetlejuice so much more. It’s not horrendous, but far from good. Half the audience seemed into it enough, but some vocally hated it afterwards. A woman started shouting as she left the theater, and I’m pretty sure she said “Tim Burton you raped my childhood.” Maybe he was in the theater, but I didn’t see him there.

The ‘Beetlejuice’ sequel stars Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Jenna Ortega, Catherine O’Hara, Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe. Warner Bros is releasing it in theaters on September 6th.