Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
Director: Tim Burton
Screenwriter: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar
Starring: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe
When it comes to identifying the origin point of the ongoing trend of bland fairy tale and fantasy adaptations that have plagued us since the 2010s, it is generally accepted that the blame lies, at least in part, at the feet of Tim Burton’s live-action Alice in Wonderland, released in 2010. The film’s general aesthetic, plus its reliance on motion capture and CGI elements, became the staple look of Disney’s live-action reimaginings of its animated classics. Burton contributed to this trend himself with Dark Shadows (2012), Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016), and Disney’s Dumbo (2019). Alice in Wonderland also marked a shift in Burton’s distinctive style, although the cracks had already begun to form with 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. While Burton had critically acclaimed hits during this time, like Big Fish (2003) and Corpse Bride (2005), it seemed like the edges of his artistry were beginning to be dulled and smoothed over. His signature combination of whimsy and macabre suddenly felt tedious and uninspiring.
When it comes to filmmakers who appear to have lost their way, the question we’re always asking is the same: what would it take for them to get their groove back? Which project could reinvigorate their artistic soul? For Burton, the answer seemed to lie in returning to one of his earliest works.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to the director’s second feature-length film, 1988’s Beetlejuice, feels like a return to form for Tim Burton. It’s a rare kind of legacy sequel that is far more interested in telling a good story than in serving us oodles of fan service or relying too heavily on metatextual discourse. Featuring the return of Michael Keaton as the titular bio-exorcist, along with the marvellously funny Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder, with rising star Jenna Ortega, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a genuinely good time at the movies.
The film picks up 36 years after the events of Beetlejuice. In that time, former goth-teen Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) has become a sellout, something most Gen-Xers would consider their worst nightmare. Lydia now uses her ability to see the dead as fodder for a supernatural reality show, ‘The Ghost House with Lydia Deetz,’ produced by her boyfriend, Rory (Justin Theroux), who is far more interested in fame and fortune than investing in their relationship. Self-proclaimed strange and unusual, Lydia hasn’t exactly had a great life following her triumphant and iconic dance to “Jump in the Line” at the end of the first film. Not only did her husband disappear in the Brazilian jungle years ago, but her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), a climate-conscious teen with a bad attitude, is estranged from her. Astrid is still deeply hurt by her father’s presumed death and she uses her mother’s inability to communicate with him in the afterlife as proof that ‘there are no such things as ghosts.’ To make matters worse, Lydia’s stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) has just informed Lydia that her father is dead and was eaten by a shark following a plane crash in the South Pacific. Forced to return home for the funeral, Lydia is as stressed out as ever, especially since she has started to see flashes of a familiar-looking striped pant suit out of the corner of her eye.
In the underworld, Betelgeuse has been having a pretty crappy time too. Not only has he been haunting Lydia, but he’s still obsessed with her, and he keeps a photo of her teenage self on his desk as he toils away in the monotonous bureaucracy of the underworld. When Lydia seeks him out to help save Astrid after she gets into the some ghostly trouble, Betelgeuse uses her desperation as a last ditch effort to finally return to the land of the living.
With Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Burton throws anything and everything at the wall to see what will stick, and man is it fun to watch. The plot mainly exists to transition us from one creepy, hilarious, and disgusting gag to the next. It works though, and Burton lets his imagination run wild. The production design of the underworld is particularly striking and those scenes are infused with energy and suspense thanks to frequent Burton collaborator Danny Elfman’s zany score. Fans of Beetlejuice will no doubt recognize the ghostly blues and greens that permeate the afterlife, but the world is greatly expanded on in this film. In addition to a soul train that takes victims to hell or Valhalla with ghostly dancers straight out of a disco swarming the platform, there is also a seemingly infinite number of new spirits haunting every corner. With claymation and puppetry, the filmmakers go to great lengths to create showstopping practical effects that are far more creative than they are realistic.
With Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Tim Burton is not interested in being self-referential and only acknowledges the previous film when it gives needed context to the characters. The filmmakers don’t rely on jokes or elements from the original and instead opt to create something that feels fresh and new. Unlike most legacy sequels, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is not weighed down by its past.
Although Beetlejuice fans might miss the prescence of the Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam (Alec Baldwin) Maitland, the ghostly couple who were the original film’s protagonists, their absence is ultimately for the better. Their story already came to an end, and instead of looking to the past and trying to recreate that magic, Burton instead chooses to center the film around Lydia. It’s a natural progression, and Ryder’s subtle yet heartbreaking performance is a real highlight of the film (a brief moment of silence for the clip-on bangs that were not, unfortunately, doing her any favors.) It’s easy to see a lot of Burton himself in Lydia, someone whose relationship with grief and death has changed drastically in the last couple of decades, her talent becoming trivial – nothing more than a cheap parlor trick. Ryder, O’Hara and Ortega anchor the film, with O’Hara delivering every single line as if her life depends on it and nailing it every time. Ryder and O’Hara’s dynamic is especially fun to watch now that Lydia is an adult and has a difficult daughter of her own. Ortega’s Astrid is sharp and thorny, with a palpable sense of anger and resentment simmering just below the surface. The additional absence of Jeffrey Jones, who played Lydia’s father in Beetlejuice, is due to him being a registered sex offender since the early 2000s, and it is explained away in the most off-handed and hilarious way possible.
Joining Keaton in the afterlife is international star and Tim Burton’s current girlfriend, Monica Bellucci, who plays Betelgeuse’s ex-wife, Delores, a soul-sucking witch who poisoned him with the Black Plague. The black and white scene depicting their weird, ill-fated love is probably one of the most visually striking scenes in the film, playing homage to the German Expressionism that so often influenced Burton over the course of his career. Willem Dafoe, clearly having the time of his life, hams it up as ghost detective who was actually a B-list actor in his waking life. Both Bellucci and Dafoe inject so much life into the film, and are indulgent in the best way. It’s really only Theroux’s Rory who feels slightly out of place; his jokes rarely land and he’s an element we could have easily done without.
With Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, it’s clear that Tim Burton has not entirely lost his spark. In returning to his roots, the filmmaker manages to create something just as wacky and weird and meaningful as the original film, rediscovering what made him such a compelling artist in the first place.
Score: 18/24
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