Great potential, but ends up a boring mess

Rating: 3/10 (25 January 2017)

This is a movie that's talked about so much that you practically know it, even if you haven't seen it; it's a pop culture phenomenon. Well, I never saw this movie when it came out in the theaters, don't really know why, just hadn't made the time to see it. I finally saw it (1/25/17) and... man, was it boring. Yes, boring.
The pacing is slow, the acting is mediocre (the mother and father) and some of the jokes don't land. I love the actors in this movie, but it just seems to drag along. The special effects are dated, but rather enjoyable, so I didn't mind that at all. My biggest gripe about this movie was with Beetlejuice himself. For a movie that carries his name in the title and is acted with great gusto by Michael Keaton, you'd think Beetlejuice would be in the movie a lot more. The movie is 1 1/2 hours long and Beetlejuice is on screen for about 15 minutes! His character is not fleshed out all that well, as oftentimes we are left to wonder about his motivation. Is he a good guy, a bad guy, who's he trying to help or hurt? Beetlejuice just acts quirky and rambles on, probably in the hopes that we as the audience won't notice that he's not really doing anything. But again, it's the story itself that fails; it has bad pacing, not enough of the main title character, and ultimately it becomes a boring mess
This is a movie that had great actors, a decent outline for a story and terrific potential, unfortunately it doesn't deliver on any of them. I think I would have liked this movie if I had seen it when it came out and I would remember it fondly and with a nostalgic sense of wonder. But no, I just recently saw it and nope, can't recommend it. As an 80's kid, I hate saying this, but this movie is just badly executed. Sad, it could have really been something, if they had only made Beetlejuice the main character in the movie and fleshed out the story.