Director: Tim Burton
Starring: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Jenna Ortega, and Willem Dafoe
Runtime: 104 minutes
Rating: 3.5 / 5
In a summer overstuffed with sequels and reboots, it’s easy to feel disillusioned. Many of these films feel a bit like zombies – dumb, lifeless, with plots that stumble aimlessly through a 2- or 3-hour run-time on wobbly legs. So you’ll forgive me, Dear Reader, if I walk into any sequel – particularly one to a movie that came out 36 years ago, before I was even born – a bit hesitant.
However, I was pleasantly surprised, then, when I walked out of the theater after “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and realized I’d genuinely enjoyed the last 100 minutes.
The film picks up 36 years after the prequel, and a lot has changed since then. Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), the gothic teenager and Beetlejuice’s almost-wife in the first film, has grown up, married, lost a husband, and cashed in on her ability to speak to ghosts by hosting a paranormal-themed talk show, Ghost House. She has a romantic relationship with her producer-slash-boyfriend, Rory (Justin Theroux), but a strained one with her daughter Astrid (played by Jenna Ortega in the kind of pitch-perfect casting that makes me wish the Oscar category for Best Casting had started this year). After the sudden death of Lydia’s father, the three of them, along with Lydia’s stepmother (Catherine O’Hara) return to Winter River for the mourning and funeral. Meanwhile, amidst the family drama in the living world, our titular character Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) is dealing with his own family drama in the afterlife when his ex-wife (Monica Bellucci) returns for revenge.
Many sequels to decades-old movies can feel like uninspired cash grabs, with the director, cast, and writers coming back just for a quick payday. Thankfully, this doesn’t feel like that. Keaton slips back into his striped suit so naturally that it’s like he never left, and O’Hara is a whimsical delight as the off-beat, artistic Delia. There’s a real chemistry among the cast members, especially between Ryder and Ortega, whose mother-daughter arc feels earnest and believable. Even newcomer Theroux fits in well as Lydia’s love interest who’s a bit too in touch with his sensitive side. Everyone seems to be having fun here, and that comes through in the performances.
There are some quirky characters who got big laughs, including Willem Defoe’s role as a dead action movie star who continues taking his role a bit too seriously in the afterlife. There are also some clever one-liners and running gags. But the film runs into some problems with plotting. At times, it feels like there are two separate plots and conflicts here – one about Beetlejuice’s ex-wife Delores and another about Astrid’s journey into the underworld. It’s as if the writing team of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (the pair also worked as creators and showrunners for Netflix’s “Wednesday”) wrote two different treatments, but then couldn’t decide which one they wanted so they just mashed the ideas together. The result is that the film’s middle third feels muddled, with some conflicts concluded in unsatisfactory ways. Delores, whose disco-themed introduction seemed to portended an important role, disappears at points, leaving me wishing that we could’ve seen more from her.
The film shines best when Burton is allowed to be Burton. He sets the tone early with an absurdist scene involving Danny DeVito and limbs that stable themselves together to the tune of The Bee Gees’ “Tragedy”. There’s also a weird-but-funny-but-creepy-but-charming musical wedding sequence that harkens back to the famous “Day-o” dance sequence from the first movie. Of course, there are some people who might find scenes of guts spilling out of bodies and baby Beetlejuices crawling around and vomiting to be too much, but then this movie isn’t for them. This is for Burton fans, and Beetlejuice fans in particular. For them, this will be home.
There’s a reason that the original “Beetlejuice” has sustained such a strong following over the years, even among fans who weren’t even born when it was first released. The charming characters, manic comedy, and spooky-yet-silly aesthetic were what drew in viewers the first time, and Burton and his team have managed to mostly resurrect it here. In doing so, they’ve achieved a rare feat – creating a sequel that is worthy of it’s existence. This is one time when summoning Beetlejuice from the dead was a good thing.