I’ve only seen the original BettleJuice once and it was fine. After seeing the sequel, I may revisit it.

The plot of BeetleJuice BeetleJuice is one that meanders and ultimately doesn’t matter. Mr. Juice (Michael Keaton) is trying to get back to the mortal realm by marrying Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), someone who last he tried to marry was a teenager.

(Are we gonna cancel Mr. Juice?)

All the while his first wife, someone who sucks the soul from you (originally called a soul-sucker) tries to track him down to suck out his soul.

This is accompanied by the main plot which is that Lydia’s kid, Astrid, (Jenna Ortega) feels like an angsty teen and wants to disavow her mother who has used the unnerving and tragic events of the first film to get a talk show. (Girlboss that trauma!) In Astrid rebellion she encounters a boy that she likes that gets her into paranormal trouble.

NONE OF THIS MATTERS.

These events are a loose webbing to hang jokes on. Many of which are successful!

I saw this with a fair amount of people all of whom laughed throughout! It’s a great time and a goofy ass movie. True Looney Tunes nonsense.

WARNING: PRETENSE INCOMING

As a classically trained actor, I couldn’t help but feel that I was watching a modern version of Commedia Dell’Arte, which is that classic Italian comedy style from the renaissance with the phallic looking masks.

You have a captain, played so stupidly by Willem DeFoe, a trickster, and a bunch of slow-minded servants; all of which are stock characters from Commedia.

Other modern examples of Commedia are The Simpsons and Looney Tunes. Notably, those are both cartoons, that unabashedly absurd cartoon logic fills up and drips out the side of BettleJuice. Characters get sucked up and turned into accordions, Mr. Juice draws a chalk outline of a bomb that actually works, and the whole things is just great.

I really enjoyed this movie as it was just pure goofy-nonsense with little to no attempt to put any heart or relatability into the story. It feels almost like a parody of the kind of films that have been deemed “lega-sequels;” your Ghostbusters, Star Warses, etc.

I did say out loud after Mr. Juice did something wacky “What a fun character.”

I can’t recommend seeing this film enough if you’re in the mood for a dumbo-wacky-ass-good-time with some hahas. It’s nice to see a comedy in the movie theatre again.

The runtime is 104 minutes