Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Mansfield Drive-in Theater
Mansfield
Sept. 8, 2024
Have you ever had a great experience and a disappointing one at the same time?
That’s how I would describe my first drive-in movie experience. I went to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice at the Mansfield Drive-in Theater. The theater is great; the movie, not so much.
First the good. Mansfield Drive-in has three huge screens and plenty of parking to accommodate moviegoers. While we were watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuice on screen one, the other screens were showing Twisters (which I enjoyed) and Deadpool and Wolverine (which I also enjoyed). The audio for the movie is piped into the cars by turning to a specific radio station.
There’s a small building between the three screens where patrons can get all of the usual movie snacks and some special treats, including fried dough and fried oreos, double bacon cheeseburgers and more. Best of all, the prices are great. I was able to get enough snacks and drinks for four people for $27, which is unheard of at a movie theater in 2024.
It was a clear, brisk night, and my friend and I sat outside the car with the radio turned up to the max. Wrapped in blankets and coats, we gazed up at the night sky and saw dozens of stars we couldn’t see in the city, and even saw two shooting stars. The movie theater is something special.
We were looking up at the sky because the movie was beyond disappointing. When I heard that there was a sequel to Beetlejuice coming 36 years later, my only question was why. But when I heard that they’d managed to reassemble almost the entire original main cast, I figured that we didn’t really need a why, that reinhabiting the creative and wacky world of Beetlejuice would be fun at least.
Michael Keaton as the eponymous demon is just as entertaining as he was in the ’80s, but this time the movie centers on the relationship between Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) and her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), and the latter’s insistence that her mother’s supernatural experiences are a bunch of hogwash.
Ryder is great as an older Lydia, and Ortega is good, as usual, although I fear that she’s beginning to be typecast in these spooky, supernatural roles. Catherine O’Hara and Willem Defoe are both hilarious in scene-stealing supporting roles.
With such a talented cast that throws themselves into their performances, how could the movie be anything but good?
Alas, the film gives this quality company nothing to do. Seriously. At about the one-hour mark my friend turned to me and said, “Nothing’s happening.”
That’s a worrying development in any movie, but particularly damning for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which clocks in at a brisk hour and 44 minutes. Beetlejuice himself doesn’t even show up until an hour in, and as a result it feels like he’s barely in the movie at all, more a cameo than the terrorizing trickster of the original. Throw in some subplots about Lydia’s pending wedding, a mysterious boy Astrid meets. and her father’s disappearance, and it becomes quite confusing how a movie with so much bloat can manage to do nothing interesting.
The worst offender of all is the alleged main plot of the film, which revolves around Beetlejuice’s first wife, Delores, seeking him out for revenge. Monica Belluci is utterly wasted in this role. She looks the part and exudes a sense of sensual danger, but that’s all she does. Her plot gets buried under everything else not happening in the movie, and she’s relegated to literally walking around the underworld asking random people where Beetlejuice is.
All of these plotlines are unsatisfyingly resolved in the crunch of the last 20 minutes of the movie. This isn’t a Marvel movie, so I wasn’t expecting a CGI-filled bloodbath. But I was expecting more than what we got, which left me with a distinct feeling of, “That’s it?” The only plot line that felt resolved in a hilarious and ultimately heartwarming way was that of O’Hara’s Delia Deetz, which I won’t spoil should you decide to drag yourself through this movie.
As anyone who has seen the first movie knows, to summon Beeltejuice you have to say his name three times. Since this movie is named Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, I feel like a third movie is a lock at this point, because how could it not be? I’ll certainly be skipping it if the second movie is any predictor of quality, and find something else to watch when I return to the Mansfield Drive-in, which I can’t wait to do.
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The Mansfield Drive-in Theater is open on weekends through the winter months.
Jamil goes to the Old State House to check out the music of I Anbassa.
