‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Movie Review: Saying His Name Again Is Overstuffed But Still Ghoulish Fun
Photo from Warner Bros.
From Jeremy Kibler
A sequel to 1988’s endlessly inspired Beetlejuice was in early development for so long that one wondered if it would ever come to fruition before we were all deceased. 36 years later, the properly titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is decidedly overstuffed but a lot of ghoulishly inventive fun. It’s a return engagement for director Tim Burton that didn’t have any loose ends to settle, and yet, what a feeling to be back in the auteur’s weird and whimsically dark sandbox. Alfred Gough & Miles Millar’s Halloween-set script bites off more than it can chew, but there’s so much joy, imagination, and macabre spirit in each frame that it becomes easier not to mind the full plate.
A little more wide-eyed and anxious all these years later, Winona Ryder reprises her teenage role as Lydia Deetz, now hosting a TV show as a paranormal investigator who’s tired of still seeing the dead, including Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton). Her hanger-on boyfriend and manager Rory (a purposefully annoying Justin Theroux) is no help, wanting her to get married and proposing on the day of her recently deceased father’s wake. Though their relationship is strained, Lydia takes her resentful daughter, Astrid (a wonderful Jenna Ortega), out of prep school to be with family, which really only includes stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara), at the Maitland couple’s former homestead. Through convoluted circumstance, Astrid gets pulled into the spirit world, which Lydia can only enter if she summons the Ghost with the Most.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opens the only way a Beetlejuice sequel should, with Danny Elfman’s instantly recognizable but rejiggered score playing over an overhead shot of a stormy Winter River, Connecticut. Thereafter, the film’s first half is a little plodding, spent setting up every plot thread and supporting player, and there are more than what anyone knows what to do with. Monica Bellucci gets a spectacularly gnarly introduction to The Bee Gees’ “Tragedy” as Delores, Betelgeuse’ soul-sucking ex-bride, but her rampage to find her hubby almost gets forgotten in the shuffle. Willem Dafoe as a brain-exposed afterlife police officer, or at least a dead B-movie actor whose claim-to-fame was that of a police officer, is a funny idea. But, a bit like Delores, he’s just another extraneous topping on the proverbial wedding cake.
Once the film sends its live characters into Barbara and Adam Maitland’s model in the attic and then the Neitherworld, things actually pop to life and become more deliriously weird and go-for-broke. A predictable teen romance takes a daringly off-kilter turn, and like before, the Neitherworld waiting room has all sorts of ghastly, funny gags. (Since patriarch Charles Deetz is dead and still-alive actor Jeffrey Jones has, for good reason, not returned, Burton cleverly works around that, starting with a claymation sequence and making it a gallows-humored running joke.) Visually, Burton delivers a phantasmagoria of color, green guts, stapled body parts, and squirts of blood, and it wouldn’t be complete without a sandworm or two. The insistence to using practical effects also goes a long way here in recapturing the original’s homemade charm and celebration of creative resourcefulness.
Lydia and Astrid’s relationship is the emotional center here, and while scenes are few and between where they’re actually on good terms, Ryder and Ortega just make total sense as mother and daughter. Dusting off the black-and-white striped suit, Michael Keaton doesn’t skip a beat, returning as the “freelance bioexorcist” with the same level of sleazy, chaotic energy. It’s as if the loosey-goosey Betelgeuse never left Keaton; a bleeped “F bomb” is actual perfection, considering the PG-rated original somehow got away with one and a crotch honk. Catherine O’Hara, too, hasn’t forgotten how to make narcissistic modern-artist stepmother Delia an over-the-top but endearing scene-stealer and soften her relationship with Lydia; she earns laughs every single time.
There are plenty of callbacks, both obvious and subtle (during Astrid’s bike ride around town, you’ll notice a certain store is now a coffee shop), but Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is bursting with enough fresh sights to be more than a nostalgia vehicle. There’s a giddy nod to Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive; a Pino Donaggio-scored dream sequence dropped out of Carrie; and an uptick in screentime for adorable shrunken-head toady Bob. Nothing can live up to the “Day-O” dinner dance, but there is a possessed lip-sync sequence to Donna Summer that’s infectious.
For such a long wait, it’s a relief that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels more like a homey reunion than a craven cash grab. This is Burton’s most personal filmmaking since 2012’s Frankenweenie with his heart truly in it and not just seeming like a rehash of the hits. Saying you-know-whose name a second time is actually a messy delight.
Rating: 3.5/5
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is now playing in theaters.
