Review: "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice"
The sequel to Tim Burton's beloved 1980s classic shows that it's still possible to inject fresh vision into an old film.
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I’ll state upfront that I went into Beetlejuice Beetlejuice with very limited expectations. I mean, let’s be real: Tim Burton hasn’t really achieved the artistic heights of his early career in a very long time, indeed. Heck, the last feature film that he released was the Disney live-action remake Dumbo, and that was 2019. Even before that, though, his career had clearly been in a bit of a slump, and his over-reliance on CGI (and on the star power of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter) were clearly taking their toll. Add to this the fact that many of Hollywood’s takes on venerable properties have been mixed at best, and you can see why I was trying to be realistic about what I was going to get.
Dear reader, I was blown away by how much I loved this movie. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve only recently seen the original–don’t hit me!--but I'm very much on the Beetlejuice fandom wagon. Appropriately enough the sequel starts several decades after the original, when Delia (Catherine O’Hara), Lydia (Wynona Ryder), and Lydia’s daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) return to Winter River for a funeral (that of Charles, Delia’s husband and Lydia’s father), only for things to go sideways in every conceivable way possible. Cue the return of Betelgeuse, who has his own troubles, chiefly the return of his soul-sucking ex-wife, Delores (Monica Bellucci).
Let’s start with the obvious. Michael Keaton is without a doubt a blast to watch in this film. From his gruff voice to his ever-disheveled appearance, this is the Beetlejuice that we all grew to know and love in the original film, even if, as becomes clear, he’s still as creepy and weird as he was back then. He still carries quite a flame for Lydia, even going so far as to have a miniature shrine on his desk. Keaton’s performance is every flavor of macabre, and his ludic chaos ignites the screen every time he appears. The brilliant thing about him is that he’s not exactly a hero or a villain but instead something in-between, for while he helps Lydia rescue Astrid from the clutches of a nefarious ghost named Jeremy (Arthur Conti) he once again tries to marry her. Some guys just don’t know when to give up.
Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara are, of course, a delight and a pleasure to watch. I love the fact that Ryder is having a much-deserved second act, thanks to her appearance in this film and her starring role in Stranger Things. She brings a remarkable blend of strength and vulnerability to this older version of Delia, someone who has found success as a pop culture medium and ghost hunter but who struggles under the weight of success, to say nothing of her strained relationship with her daughter. Throughout the film Ryder reminds us why she is one of the finest actresses of her generation. O’Hara, of course, is still deliciously daffy as Delia, an artist whose work is as abstract as she is, and the veteran actress’s comedic timing is as spot-on as ever (there’s even an allusion to Moira of Schitt’s Creek). Imperious and yet somehow utterly charming, Delia is the type of person who is as likely to order supposedly defanged asps to pay homage to her dead husband as she is to demand to see the manager of the afterlife.
Fortunately, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice isn’t just a rehash of the greatest hits of the original, and the freshness in this outing comes largely thanks to Jenna Ortega. Over the last several years Ortega has repeatedly shown that she has what it takes to be a genuine horror star, thanks to her performances in both big-screen slashers such as Scream and Scream VI as well as her star-making turn in the morbidly delightful Netflix series Wednesday, in which she plays the title character. Astrid is arguably one of her complex characters, a young woman holding onto her fair share of resentments at her mother even while she also wants her to use her ghostly powers to reconnect with her deceased father. Given her vulnerability, it’s hardly surprising that she falls in with a nefarious spirit who wants to use her in his plot to return to the world of the living, though he finds that she’s not nearly as easy a victim as he thought. Throughout Ortega is just the right mix of enigmatic and endearing.
There are a number of other notable additions to the cast. Monica Bellucci is delightfully macabre as Betelgeuse’s former wife who, having stapled herself back together, sets off to find Betelgeuse and claim his soul for her own. Justin Theroux is perfectly cast as Lydia’s unctuous and conniving boyfriend, Rory, while Willem Defoe, never one to turn away from an opportunity to play a weirdo with a mangled face, is perfectly cast as former actor turned underworld detective Wolf Jackson.
Like its predecessor, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is quite light on its feet when it comes to its story, which manages to keep many balls in the air at once. While all of the pieces don’t always fit together as neatly as we might like, I was actually quite surprised by the extent to which the film actually does end up feeling remarkably coherent and satisfying at a narrative level. Of course, there’s always room for a sequel, particularly since we already know that Betelgeuse isn’t the type of character to ever let anything go, particularly not when it comes to Lydia.
What makes Beetlejuice Beetlejuice so particularly fun and enjoyable is the extent to which it manages to evoke some of the pleasures of the ‘80s original while also being very much of the present. The effects are deliciously bizarre, with guts and squishy sound-effects galore, as well as the usual strange denizens of the afterlife (including the zombie Bob and his fellows) and a brief cameo by comedy legend Danny DeVito. The sequence in which Delores literally staples herself back together is arguably the most Burton-esque in the entire film, though the extended performance of “MacArthur Park” comes in close second (as do the many moments when Delores sucks the souls out of her unwitting victims).
In other words, it’s all a helluva lot of fun. Given the extent to which we live in a world in which remakes and reboots continue to be both a key part of Hollywood output but in which very few of them seem to have any spirit, I’m more than happy to say that this is one reboot that I’m glad to see back from the dead.