"BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE" - REVIEW
Say it once, say it twice: it’s a sequel to 1988’s BEETLEJUICE, but it is director Tim Burton who is back from the dead.
But first, seriously: why rob the graves of the movies we loved as children and run the risk of making what could’ve been another exercise in soulless ‘memberberries nostalgia? Is Hollywood truly out of ideas? Does Tim Burton, whose last big-screen outing was Disney’s live-action DUMBO, have something to prove? Is there any afterlife left inside of the bloated corpse of Beetlejuice?
I’m happy to report that BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE is not a bloated corpse. In fact, it is an absolute gas, and until I was watching it, I didn’t know how badly I was craving a movie like this.
Without getting into spoilers, Winona Ryder is once again the heart of the story as a grown-up Lydia Deetz, experiencing the pains of midlife self-doubt, trying to balance career as a supernatural TV show host; a professional/romantic partnership with her producer Rory (played with hilariously acute toxicity by Justin Theroux); being a mother to her jaded daughter Astrid (played by Burton‘s WEDNESDAY, Jenna Ortega) who doesn’t want anything to do with her, or the supernatural. Lydia is also grieving the loss of her father Charles (played in the original by Jeffrey Jones) alongside her tacky artist stepmother Delia (the priceless Catherine O’Hara). And then, of course, lurking in the bowels of the underworld beneath the scale model of Winter River, Connecticut in the Deetz attic is the one and only Beetlejuice (played once again with great zeal by the great Michael Keaton), itching for some mischief and a little revenge.
While presented on a bigger scale (I saw it in beautiful Dolby Cinema), most elements of the story and how it is told are in keeping with the original: it’s as surreal, sweet, grotesque, and random as the first, trying lots of visual and verbal jokes on for size, and seeing what fits. The script by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (who also share story credit with Seth Grahame-Smith) is messy and overstuffed, to be sure… but so was the script for the first one, if you think about it, and in much the same way. The difference is that the seams show a bit more here. There are many fun and funny ideas and characters, including Monica Bellucci, as a literal soul-sucker and Beetlejuice’s ex-wife Delores, and Willem Dafoe as an underworld “police detective,” which of course leads to some extra subplots that the movie has trouble paying off.
But so what? I was having such a good time that I didn’t care. BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE is a legacy sequel done right, because it isn’t concerned with taking calculated risks and catering to fan service to ensure it makes more money, so it's best to go in without your brow furrowed and arms folded. It’s a movie that succeeds in what it sets out to do. Like the first one, it’s a gag machine that creates a good-enough story on which to hang loads of delightfully gross images and jokes. It honors the first movie without reverently preserving it in amber (or formaldehyde), allowing its central characters to actually grow and change in the 36 years between films, the way people do. Burton brings back a refreshing handmade feel, with the practical effects and stop-motion animation on which he built his name. The filmmakers even get around the problem of the absence of Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis from the first film), who would still be unable to leave the Deetz house, with a hilarious one-off joke that reminded me of Rob Lowe’s solution to a screenwriting problem in THANK YOU FOR SMOKING. Late in the film, there is an inspired sequence of a dazzling musical-number-while-possessed that had me gasping and laughing (admittedly, the song itself is an inside joke my wife and I share), and a sequence that I feel was made just for me. Most importantly, the trio of Ryder, Ortega, and O’Hara are all wonderful together. Plus, Michael Keaton slips right back into the stripes and embodies Beetlejuice with fervor (I haven’t mentioned him much here, but because like the first one, the new film uses just the right amount of the Ghost with the Most).
Which brings me back to Tim Burton, who seems to have rediscovered his own inventive and sweetly macabre spirit with this heartfelt and demented horror comedy. Burton’s films had such a profound impact on my life growing up. He might have had the best run of critical and commercial hits of any director in the ‘80s and ‘90s—PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, BEETLEJUICE, BATMAN, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, BATMAN RETURNS, ED WOOD, MARS ATTACKS! and SLEEPY HOLLOW—and then a steep drop off that started in 2001 with PLANET OF THE APES, revived a little with BIG FISH (although I don’t love it as much as some) and a lot of fits and starts since then. Gone were original stories, which were replaced by, “what would it be like if Tim Burton adapted fill-in-the-blank?“ Yes, he’s going back to the well (or the grave), but everything that he excels at has been revived and reanimated here, and BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE is easily his most flat-out deliriously entertaining film since SLEEPY HOLLOW in 1999. Everyone on screen and behind the camera seems to be having the time of their life.
I don’t know if it’ll be a classic like the first one, but they are definitely in the same spirit and I would most certainly watch it again. It is big, wild, uncomplicated fun, and if you are ready to welcome back this character and revisit the world of Tim Burton, you’ll have a wonderfully spooky and satisfying time.
#BeetlejuiceBeetlejuice
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Zach is a proud member of the Minnesota Film Critics Alliance (MNFCA). For more info about Zach, the organization, or to read other great reviews from other great Minnesota-based film critics, click here: https://mnfilmcriticalliance.wordpress.com/