“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” Review
Winona Ryder (Left) and Michael Keaton reprise their iconic roles as Lydia Deetz and Betelgeuse in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice", a sequel to the 1988 supernatural comedy.
For the longest time, a sequel to the comedy classic “Beetlejuice” has been in the works. Every year an article or two would appear in publications like Variety or The Hollywood Reporter that a script was being written or that people like Micheal Keaton, Winona Ryder and Tim Burton were involved with negotiations. Eventually, I just grew to accept that a sequel to the beloved supernatural film would never happen and I was okay with it. After all, with so much time between films, it would be beyond difficult to make a film worthy of “the ghost with the most.” Fortunately, director Tim Burton has done just that with “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”, an especially fun time that offers plenty of laughs, creativity and excitement worthy of Burton’s talents.
Decades after the original film, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) and her estranged daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) reunite with Lydia’s stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) following the death of Lydia’s father. Now staying at the old house on the hill where all of the supernatural activity took place in the last film, the Deetz family finds themselves faced with a ghostly threat. Also in dire circumstances is the demonic trickster Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) who is trying to evade his soul-sucking ex-wife Delores (Monica Belucci) while continuing to operate his freelance bio-exorcism business. With both parties facing extreme danger, Lydia and Betelgeuse must join forces to save their own lives (or afterlives).
Despite the love I have for Tim Burton and the fact that he’s made some of my favorite films of all time, like “Ed Wood” and “Batman (1989)”, I haven’t been that excited about his films for the past ten years. Some of his recent offerings, like “Big Eyes”, have shown his talent for storytelling but there just hasn’t been the energy that used to surround his work. That is until “Wednesday” was released and showed off Burton’s talent for the zany, gothic and supernatural. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” rides this momentum and is dripping with a fun atmosphere.
From the use of many practical effects (like puppetry and extraordinary makeup) to production design that carries the creativity of the original, this is a sequel that does make some updates with its arsenal of tools while still remembering its roots. CGI was certainly used in this film but it is worked in alongside a variety of other magic tricks. Watching this film was a symphony of gross, enchanting and immersive excitement and all with the deranged fun of Danny Elfman’s score. I’m convinced that the costume, makeup and production design departments must have had an ongoing contest. The goal? To see who could make the most creative thing all throughout the shoot with the winner being the audience.
Even though nearly forty years have passed, the returning cast still feels energized which was one of my chief concerns. How can Michael Keaton return to this role when he’s not as spry as he once was? Well, as Betelgeuse, Keaton plays to his strength of quick wit to offset the lessened movement. There are plenty of physical jokes but we’re just not going to see Keaton bouncing around as much. But the jokes that he delivers are exceptionally funny. Like the original film, Betelgeuse has less presence in the film than you might expect but that’s not a bad thing. If anything, it’d be odd if he was everywhere. The focus is on the Deetz family and their interactions with the afterlife and that is where the real meat of the story is.
Both Winona Ryder and especially Catherine O’Hara relish their reprisals and it is nice to see the pair getting along for this story since the relationship of Lydia and Delia was quite contentious in the original. To see Ryder playing this role a little wiser but with the same affinity for the strange and unusual was such a treat. As for O’Hara, as much as I’ve liked her voice acting in films like “Elemental”, we need her in more live-action roles since her performance as Delia continues to cement her status as a comedy powerhouse.
Adding to the ensemble is Jenna Ortega who is continuing to dominate in her quest to be in every recent film that will become a must-watch around Halloween. As Lydia’s daughter, Astrid doesn’t believe in the supernatural and her discovery of this crazy world that her mom knows all too well is a lot of fun. She could have easily been a stick-in-the-mud but Ortega knows how to play her performance as subdued yet intriguing, fitting since she used this same method to deliver a performance as Wednesday Addams to rival Christina Ricci.
While the atmosphere and characters really hold up, I was having a hard time deciding if the script of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” was working for or against the final film. There are so many plot threads including the death of Charles, Lydia’s romance with the scummy producer (Justin Theroux) of her supernatural talk show, Betelgeuse and his ex-wife, a former actor turned ghost cop (Willem Dafoe), a budding romance between Astrid and a local boy named Jeremy (Arthur Conti) and the relationship between the different generations of the Deetz family. With so much happening in an hour-and-44-minutes, I was afraid that this film was going to fall apart. However, give credit to writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar for wrapping everything up in such a satisfying way. The insane finale that is built up over the course of the film had me in complete stitches and their comedic talent cannot be understated. Since the original film was rated PG and this film is PG-13, both films had one opportunity to use the word “fuck” and Gough and Millar knew how to use it effectively.
This sequel certainly does capture the mania of the original and comes together in the chaotic manner that you’d expect from the world of “Beetlejuice”. Sure there are some lapses in logic but both of these films have made it clear that they don’t always play by their rules. That’s just part of the fun. But it does take a while for this fun to be had. The first twenty minutes of this film had me a bit underwhelmed with a lot of exposition and not much supernatural activity but “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” does find its ghostly footing and grabs the audience for the rest of its running time.
With no one really asking for this sequel, I’m amazed at not only how entertaining “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is but how fun it feels for Tim Burton to really return to his zany side. Cinematically, I haven’t felt this level of passion since “Frankenweenie” and it really has shown a promising return to the kinds of films that made Burton a household name. If insane people can continue to celebrate Christmas earlier and earlier in the year, then I think lovers of Halloween should have the same shot and this sequel is the perfect treat for that first spooky fix.
