Beetlejuice 2's Biggest Problems Are Plain As Day

A waste of Bellucci The juice is well and truly loose as  Michael Keaton's bio-exorcist returns   at long last with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. It's  the most Burtonish Burton movie yet, but there   are moments that could've been bio-exorcised  without being missed. Warning: spoilers ahead! Teased in the trailer as the film's big bad,  one of the most notable crimes Beetlejuice   Beetlejuice commits is introducing a great  villain in the form of Monica Bellucci's   Delores and doing absolutely nothing with  her for most of the film. Revealed to be   the cause of Beetlejuice's death, the movie  sets Delores up as an impressive force, broken   out of containment as a live-action Corpse Bride,  and sucking the life out of Danny DeVito's Janitor   before setting off to exact her revenge on the  former flame that killed her. And ... that's it. From there, the actress spends the rest  of the film walking towards the camera   through the kooky and crooked halls of  the afterlife in search of Beetlejuice. "Where is Beetlejuice?" Only in the film's final act, when the movie  is rushing to lay all its plot threads to rest,   does she finally encounter her ex-hubby  — only to be swiftly eaten by a sandworm.   It's nothing new for Tim Burton to cast his  real-life romantic partner in a project,   but here's hoping that in whatever gig he has  lined up next, Bellucci gets more to work with. Dead-end love If we had a nickel for every time Jenna  Ortega was the daughter of a popular goth   character and falls for a local boy who turns  out to be a monster, we'd have two nickels,   which isn't much — but it's weird that  they both happened in Tim Burton projects. "Pain and suffering are always inevitable." "Where have you been all my life?" Equally as impactful as Dolores, Arthur Conti's  Jeremy really does feel like a rough draft of   Hunter Doohan's Tyler from Netflix's Wednesday  series, which is even more annoying given that   he actually gives a great but grossly  underused performance. The only benefit   to be found in his inclusion is that his killer  spirit, Richie, acts as an entry point into the   world that Astrid has refused to believe in.  But even that leads to some sketchy plot holes. "Astrid! Stop torturing your mother." Did the youngest Deetz family member really need  romance in order to see things from her mother's   perspective? More to the point, what was it that  allowed her to see Jeremy in the first place?   When the ghost spills the beans about his plans  to use Astrid's soul to escape the afterlife,   he even admits he doesn't know why she saw  him. We wish it had been given more time,   or none at all, instead of  lingering in storyline limbo. Derailing the soul train Wednesday provoked questions about  Burton's racially-skewed casting choices,   and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice does little to dispel  them. In fact, the only scenes in the new sequel   to involve characters of color are when, dragged  into the afterlife by Jeremy, Astrid finds herself   at risk of being sent to the great beyond and  has to board a subway train filled with Black   extras dressed in '70s gear and afros. It's a  cheap, outdated set piece that only highlights   just how limited Burton's films are  in regards to diversity. When the only   speaking role a Black cast member has is as  the Conductor ordering everyone "All aboard   the Soul Train," it shines a spotlight on  the fact that more work that should've been   done here. Like the Soul Train itself,  the sequence never really goes anywhere. Not canceling Jeffrey Jones A minute spent paying attention to  a character played by a convicted   sex offender is a minute too many.  And yet, in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,   Jeffrey Jones' Charles Deetz is not  only the main drive for getting the   family back together but is repeatedly – and  unnecessarily – revisited throughout the film. "What? Why? No. No. No." For those that don't know, in the early  2000s, Jones was arrested for possession   of child pornography as well as soliciting a  minor to pose for nude photos. He was given   five years probation and required to register on  the national database as a child sex offender. While Jones doesn't reprise his role,   the film resorts to stop-motion animation  to reveal Charles' cause of death,   explaining that he was killed in a shark  attack during a bird-watching expedition. For the rest of the film, Charles  is shown as half the man he was,   wandering through the afterlife as a pair of  legs topped by a shark-shaped bite where his   head used to be. While the uninformed might  be fine with it, Jones' continued presence   throughout the film is strongly felt when it  shouldn't be there at all. Why couldn't they   have simply used a line of dialogue to write him  out of the story in the same way that the mere   mention of "a loophole" explains why Barbara  and Adam aren't present this time around? "I can't believe Grandpa is dead." Instead, far too much attention is paid to  Charles' character when simply giving up   the ghost would've been the preferable approach. Rory deserves better - or worse In a film that includes a horrifying birth  sequence involving a Beetlejuice baby having   a Trainspotting moment, somehow Justin Theroux's  parasitic boyfriend weaseling his way into the   Deetz dynasty comes off creepier. "Oh my god. I was helpfully getting   some boxes in town and I heard  you screaming! Are you all right?" Another new character that makes  little impact in the film as a whole,   Theroux does a great job in turning  Rory — the new beau of Winona Ryder's   Lydia – into a loathsome foil. The problem  is that the big reveal of his true agenda   and the justice he's dealt as a result are  all dished out in the time it takes to say: "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice." There could have actually been something worth  playing around with here in terms of story. Rory   secretly shares the same view as Astrid, whose  disbelief in her mother's story is the wedge   that pushes them apart and may have made for a  more interesting family fix by the end. Instead,   Rory's forced to admit to his scheme before  being swiftly carried away by a sandworm and   Delores at the end of the film. As a  result, Theroux's character ends up   being just one more of many that are rushed  off stage when time could've been spent to   reveal that the real monster was the other  guy haunting the Deetz family all along,   and not the one with the mad green hair and  rotten teeth – even if he's no good, either.