When Beetlejuice came out in 1988, director Tim Burton and Michael Keaton captured this crazy and insane lightning in a bottle. It felt like someone gave them the keys to the factory and said, “Here you go boys, have fun!” Keaton as Beetlejuice was unhinged, a walking id and Burton’s directing matched that performance every frame. With its success in theaters and video and streaming over the years, we finally have a sequel, like a zombie-fied hand busting out of a grave. But this time, it’s welcome.
36 years after the end of the first film, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is now the host of a successful television show where she talks to the dead. When she gets a call from her stepmother, Delia (the always awesome Catherine O’Hara), that her father has died, she heads Winter River, Connecticut for the funeral, with daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) and fiancé Rory (Justin Theroux) in tow.
When Astrid gets herself in trouble with a newfound friend (Arthur Conti), Lydia turns to the only person (thing?) that she knows who can help: the one and only Mr. Juice.
It would be nearly impossible for Burton, the writers (Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, Seth Grahame-Smith, Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson) and actors to recapture the magic of the first film. It was something totally original and Keaton was a force of nature and so many other filmmakers have tried to mimic it over the years. But that’s not to say that they didn’t come close. Keaton is still a whirling dervish, saying and acting out every impulse, still tossing out those one liners, left and right.
Ryder (who wears Lydia again like a pair of favorite shoes) and O’Hara have lots of scenes together and the characters have mellowed towards each other over the years. They’re still bickering, which leads to some fun throughout the film, but it’s that family bickering where there is love underneath. O’Hara can take a line, any line at all and turn it into something brilliantly funny.
Ortega is your typical teenager, or as typical as one can be when your mom is a famous tv host who can talk to dead people. Her scenes with Conti, a boy who is seemingly perfect for her at first, opens her up a bit more, making her moments in the final act that much better.
Monica Bellucci, who plays Beetlejiuce’s ex-wife Delores, feels a bit wasted. She’s almost an evil version of Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas (which Burton wrote and O’Haha voiced), complete with staples all over her body. She’s hell bent of sucking the soul out of Beetlejuice (literally) but the character floats in and out of the film and could have easily been written out.
With Beetlejuice, the Batman films and yeah, I’ll toss in Dumbo, Burton and Keaton have built a series of films worthy of anything that Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro have done. My fingers crossed that a Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in development.
