Rotten tomatoes is gaslighting me and I simply refuse.

Someone explain this to me. I’m having an mental crisis because in my eyes this movie doesn’t even get a passing grade and I’m questioning my media literacy skills. Is it paid reviews? Is that it?

Full disclosure: I haven’t seen the first Beetlejuice movie. I don’t think that this matters in this case. I know the gist. I’m familiar with Burton’s style. At most I might’ve missed some references.

Also spoilers ahead.

Y’all, this wasn’t a good movie. It wasn’t my type of humor and that’s subjective, I realize. I feel like that’s the last point on the list on why this movie just wasn’t good to me.

First: the positives

I liked Willem Dafoe. I like Willem Dafoe in most things.

…

The opening title sequence was nice?

Now: the critiques

The biggest two points against this movie definitely go hand in hand: the plot-character distribution and the pacing.

It felt like there wasn’t a central conflict, just a whole onslaught of little baby conflicts that didn’t complement each other.

• Monica Belluci’s character as Beetlejuice’s ex-wife
• Lydia’s dad died
• Delia’s art show about grief
• Lydia’s weird boyfriend/pressured Halloween wedding
• Beetlejuice is haunting Lydia to marry her
• Lydia and Astrid’s mother-daughter issues
• Astrid having a crush on a boy who turns out to be a ghost that wants to use her to turn back to life
• Astrid having unresolved issues about her dad dying when she was young
• Willem Dafoe is doing things (funny, but why)

I don’t think I can qualify any one of these as the Main Plot. Everytime a side plot was introduced I thought that that would be the main conflict, but no. Most of the plotlines just kind of either end abrubtly or never really get going to begin with.

With the end result being that the movie just feels like it doesn’t really have a climax. Astrid’s killer ghost crush gets shafted abruptly somewhere in the middle of the film, the grandfather just wanders around while Delia dies without any prelude (or afterlude, really. She really died and everyone was like oh well), Lydia’s boyfriend gets also shafted, Dolores (the ex-wife) mainly struts through hallways and sucks the life out of ghosts before also getting shafted, Lydia and Astrid’s interpersonal issues sort of get adressed with quickness and haste, Astrid’s dead dad shows up per plot convenience and left no impression; and lastly the song and dance number around Beetlejuice and Lydia’s wedding lasted too long to create any tension. When it gets interrupted by Dolores it felt to me like *then* the climax or the ending conflict would take place, only for a random sand worm from a throwaway earlier scene to eat both her and Lydia’s boyfriend and end that whole situation. Then we get a couple of fake-out endings end then the end credits started rolling.

The lights in the theater turned on and I looked at my friend confused. She looked back equally confused.

Finally, and again this is purely subjective I know, I just wasn’t laughing. I just didn’t think it was very funny. Very boomer humor. Very “a soul sucking demon? You mean my ex-wife?? har har”

In conclusion: I am still confused 😦