New Review: Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice (2024)

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, Jenna Ortega, Catherine O’Hara, Monica Belluci, Willem Dafoe, Arthur Conti, Justin Theroux, Danny DeVito, Burn Gorman

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice left me with the same feeling of indifference as its predecessor. Yes, it is a terrific looking movie, and yes there are a few solid chuckles, and yes Keaton is as great here as he was the last time. It’s just that, outside of the unique visuals and some good performances, there’s not a whole lot to keep me interested in it. In other words, it really isn’t any better or worse than its predecessor, so if you’re a fan, you should have a great time here.

Winona Ryder returns as Lydia Deetz, who is now a star of a tv show where she investigates haunted houses. She’s been having visions of ghosts and Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) returning, and what’s worse, her stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) texts her with the terrible news that her father Charles was killed by a shark after having survived a plane crash. The last moments of her father’s life are shown in a charming Claymation flashback, and because the shark bit off Charles’ head, that allows Burton to bring the character back without having to bring back the original actor (who turned out to be a not very nice person).

Anyway, before returning to Winter River for the funeral, Lydia has to pick up her environmental activist daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) from school. It seems as though Lydia and Astrid have a rocky relationship, which has only gotten worse since the death of Astrid’s father a few years back. Lydia has put her career as someone who can communicate with the dead above her relationship with her daughter, and Astrid doesn't believe in the supernatural and thinks her mother is a fraud. While attending Charles’ wake, Lydia’s tv producer boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux) proposes to her and pressures her to get married on Halloween.

Understandably disgusted by her mother’s acceptance of the marriage proposal, Astrid bikes into town and comes across a seemingly friendly lad named Jeremy (Arthur Conti). A potential romance blossoms between these two, although given the tortured camera angles used to introduce his parents, it isn’t too hard to see where this subplot is going. In truth, if Burton had decided to write up a third movie, then there was enough material with this story thread to fill a whole movie.

Of course, that is not what this movie is about. The primary antagonist here is supposed to be Delores (Monica Belluci), Betelgeuse’s soul-sucker of an ex-wife who somehow escapes the captivity she was in and goes on a rampage to find Betelgeuse. In order to escape her, Betelgeuse needs to marry Lydia. Belluci sucks a few souls at the start, but then she disappears for such a long time that I almost forgot she was in the movie. The same thing can be said for Willem Dafoe, who plays former B-movie actor turned after-life detective Wolf Jackson. He shows up for a few scenes, but then disappears for a large chunk of it.

That right there is the biggest problem with the screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar: there are so many characters and story threads here that the whole thing feels cluttered and messy. There are a few jokes that work here, the best of which involves a Beetlejuice baby that Keaton punts across a room like a football. The weakest gag is the scene set inside a church that tries to recreate the magic of the "Deo" scene from the original. It doesn’t work. It goes on for way too long and concludes the Delores story thread in a very anticlimactic way. As for the final five minutes, I have no idea what Burton was going for there, but it didn’t work.

As is the case with most of Burton’s works, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a great looking movie. The after-life settings are just as eye-catching as they were before (although the “Soul Train” set was pretty darn hokey), and it’s all captured in eyegasmic compositions courtesy of cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos. The sand worm from the original is back, and he looks exactly as he did 36 years ago (which is a compliment).

The performances are fine, for what the actors are given. Keaton steals the show, of course, as the smart-alecky demon, and Jenna Ortega is convincing as Lydia’s troubled daughter. Ryder is a bit more subdued here than I remember her being before (although it’s quite funny when she does her breathing exercises), while O’Hara goes so very far over-the-top (as only she can). Dafoe and Belluci are pretty forgettable here, although Conti does bring a slimy charm to his role as Jeremy. The worst performance is turned in by Theroux, who overplays the sleazy boyfriend role to such a grating degree that it becomes painful to watch him at times. Fans of the original might be sad to know that the characters played by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin are absent here (apparently, they found a “loophole” and moved on).

In a way, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a comeback of sorts for Burton, who hasn’t really made a movie I liked or loved since his Big Fish back in 2003 (I know I was one of the very few people to really hate his Netflix show Wednesday, which also had Ortega). He seems to be having as much fun making this movie as he did with the original. Maybe with his next movie, he’ll be able to recapture some of the magic he had in some of his earlier works. Fans of the original movie might say that he recaptured that magic with this movie. It’s a nice try, but it didn’t quite work for me.

Final Grade: ** ½ (out of ****)

Rated PG-13 (which is what the first film should have been rated) for violence, gore, profanity