Note for non-Czech speaking viewers: there’s a two-minute backstory sequence in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice amusingly narrated in Italian but screened only with Czech subtitles in local cinemas.
The Deetz family is haunted once again, this time by the not-so-recently deceased, in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a long-belated sequel to the 1988 Tim Burton classic opening in cinemas worldwide this weekend. While Burton has returned to the director’s chair, this update doesn’t come close to matching the dazzling creative vision of his original film; still, stacked up against what else is playing at the multiplex, it’s weird and subversive enough to warrant at least a mild recommendation.
Burton’s original Beetlejuice is one of his most distinctive and very best films, in large part thanks to the creative elements: an inventive script by Michael McDowell & Larry Wilson that explored the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the afterlife from a ghost’s point of view; eye-popping production design from Bo Welch; one of Danny Elfman’s most memorable soundtracks; Michael Keaton‘s off-the-wall performance as the titular trickster demon; and Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis as the perfect country-bumpkin foils for his comic madness.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, meanwhile, really only boasts one of those elements: Keaton’s titular character, who is as delightful here as he was in the original, though not nearly as menacing. He’s now running an entire agency of reverse-exorcists offering haunting services for recently-deceased ghosts who want to oust the humans that haunt their homes; in one of the film’s few nostalgia-bait detours, the entire agency is staffed by shrunken-head guys like the one Beetle sat down next to in the original film.
Unlike the polished script from the original film, the overall narrative in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a mess of story strands that fail to build on each other in any meaningful way. This is most evidenced by the appearance of Monica Bellucci, playing Beetlejuice’s hacked-up ex-wife Dolores, who (literally) puts herself together at the start of the film. She’s a soul-sucker who amusingly leaves piles of skin on the ground after sending her victims from the afterlife to the after-afterlife, and spends the whole movie looking for her ex… only to disappear from the movie as soon as she finds him.
What should be the primary storyline in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice takes place in the current-life, and involves three generations of the Deetz family: Delia (Catherine O’Hara) and her daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder), back from the first film, and Lydia’s semi-estranged daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega). Delia is still a performance artist and Lydia hosts a ghost-hunting TV show, while Astrid suffers torment at a boarding school.
The Deetzes gather at the Winter River country home from the first film for the funeral of husband-father-grandfather Charles (while the characters played by Baldwin and Davis only get passing mention, there’s a surprising amount of Jeffrey Jones here), where Beetlejuice sets his sights on Lydia once again. All three actresses are excellent here, but one wishes they had more agency in the events of the movie.
Instead, we get additional plotlines involving sleazy TV producer Rory (Justin Theroux), who proposes to Lydia at her father’s funeral; neighborhood teen (Arthur Conti), who strikes up a relationship with Astrid; and Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe) an afterlife detective and former hard-boiled Hollywood actor. No less than three storylines in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice are resolved by characters falling through a hole in the floor and out of the movie.
But what Beetlejuice Beetlejuice lacks in narrative coherency it makes up for in weirdness. Character design is outstanding, with the makeup effects on departed characters like the half-eaten Charles, Astrid’s piranha-chomped father Richard (Santiago Cabrera), and a bleach-chugging janitor played by Danny Devito a highlight. Practical effects also steal the show, and include an entire animated stop-motion flashback sequence, a ’60s Italian horror throwback (Mario Bava is name-dropped later in the film), stop-motion sandworms, and Bellucci’s sick soul-sucking.
Bo Welch’s production design, meanwhile, is missed; the slick-but-pedestrian sets in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, many overtly lifted from German expressionism, recall the work at the end of Blumhouse’s Imaginary rather than Welch’s unforgettable work from the original film.
And while Danny Elfman is back as composer of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, music is the one area where the film truly disappoints. Elfman’s classic Beetlejuice theme is played exactly twice, over the opening and closing credits, while an original score of any kind is noticeably absent from much of the movie. Instead, we get an array of disparate pop hits from decades past, including the big showstopper: three renditions of MacArthur Park, one of which is sung, in full, by the entire cast of the movie at the film’s big wedding night climax. Yes, MacArthur Park, which has been called the worst song of all time, in place of Harry Belafonte‘s smooth calypso classics from the original.
In an age when the ghosts of 80s and 90s cinema are routinely resurrected for little reason other than nostalgia bait (this summer alone has seen Road House, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Twisters, Alien: Romulus, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, and The Crow, just to name a few) Beetlejuice Beetlejuice stands out from the pack for trying something a little different. Considering the final result, however, one wonders if they shouldn’t have picked just a few more memberberries.
