siderite

It's hard to make a sequel of an '80s movie in the 2020s, but especially something like Beetlejuice. I can barely remember the first one, but I am pretty sure I had more fun watching it than watching this one. And it's not that it's bad, it's that it's average. The jokes feel Looney Toons, the characters are over the top for no reason and everything seems a big joke. Jenna Ortega's casting didn't help with the feeling that I am watching a crossover with The Adams Family. Oh, there were musical numbers. I admit they weren't unfunny, but it all added to the slapstick and less to the story.

The first movie was about a normal family terrorized by a trickster demon. The fear was real and the comedy was just easing in the experience. I didn't feel there was any horror in this one, while featuring a nutty and eccentric family to being with, where the biggest problem was not believing in ghosts and then being indifferent to them, rather than fearing them. Everybody went and came back from the underworld like it was a room next door. Monica Bellucci's side story had absolutely no bearing on the plot, Danny de Vito just cameoed and Willem Dafoe's character did nothing but look pretty. Or was that Monica?

Anyway, bottom line is that, if this would have been a new idea, it would have probably felt better. Instead it's a really... uninspired sequel. Not bad, not good, not the '80s, but not the '20s either. The acting was fine - maybe that was the best part of the film - the rest was just... meh.

This is another of those artsy "non linear storytelling" films, which would normally too boring to present in a linear fashion so the editor switches randomly between time periods in someone's life. It's also a movie about a recovering alcoholic, which is hard to watch and by definition is reserved to a small category of people, because those who don't know alcoholics or addicts don't get it and alcoholics watch the movie and feel the need to drink. Being smack in the middle I didn't get it and I felt the need to drink.

Now, I am a bit mean, because the movie is well acted, covers well a very serious matter, the music is good, the Orkney nature scenes are beautiful and, as a drama, this is a very good film. But it's not entertaining in any way, it's just depressing and sad. Imagine Trainspotting, but without all the comedy and camaraderie and wacky drug imagery or the good internal monologues, just the part where he is sober and bored out of his mind.

Bottom line: a good presentation of alcoholism, but not fun.

In preparation for watching this film, I also watched the series, itself an offshoot of another anime that I had not seen. Watching the Mononoke series I was left with questions and uncertainties that I felt were due to be resolved in this film, released 15 years after the series was. No such luck.

Instead more questions, more obscure references, a more 3-D animation that felt less impactful than the series and a promise to continue the Mononoke tales in another upcoming movie. In short, I got less from it that I got from the original. That doesn't mean it wasn't an interesting, informative and beautiful animation film, it was just that I would have preferred a second season of the series, with the same attention to detail and less focus on the feature's length. In truth, this should not have been a movie at all.

Bottom line: the stories in this universe are interesting and very Japanese, they make me feel like I begin to understand more of their culture, but I fear the direction the productions are going is not the right one.