Having paused for 38 years to catch its breath, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice reminds us what we loved about the original 1988 movie… and what we found slightly less than satisfying.
1988 was when some of today’s biggest actors were born – Emma Stone and Glenn Powell for instance. It was the year of Seoul Olympics. And it was around then that Tim Berners-Lee started messing about with a concept that would become the World Wide Web. So, yes, a while ago.
Clicking right through back to the present, there’s no sign of Alec Baldwin or Geena Davis in this sequel but a lot of the cast and crew are back – most crucially Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse the “bio-exorcist” (he is to the world of the dead what everyday exorcists are to the world of the living), Winona Ryder as Lydia, the young woman who could see dead people last time around and has now monetised that into a TV career, plus Catherine O’Hara as her ditzy, self-obsessed mother. Returning crew include director Tim Burton, composer Danny Elfman and Bo Welch on production design, all three of them vital components in creating the camp comic cartoon gothic material that the franchise (as it now is) runs on. Also back is Michael McDowell as one of the writers. If you’re going to spit – and it isn’t necessary – aim it at him.
Which is another way of saying that again there isn’t much to get hold of here in terms of character or plot. The joys are precisely in the work that the Burton, Elfman, Welch combo produce, a dizzyingly energetic string of incidents held together by visual gags, cartoon ick and big performances.
I forgot to mention Jenna Ortega, a new addition of course, since she was years away from being born first time around. She is sight unseen obviously going to fit in, given that she was Wednesday in the Addams Family spin-off of the same name, and since the Beetlejuice thing is really the Addams Family warmed through.
And she absolutely does. Her performance is a thing of wonder, suggesting coherence where there is none and welding together a plot that has Lydia being courted by the ghastly self-serving Rory (Justin Theroux), Betelgeuse/Beetlejuice (you choose, both seem valid) being chased by Monica Bellucci’s Delores, an undead woman held together by staples, Delia (O’Hara) accidentally killing herself and entering the undead realm, where Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe) is an overripe actor who’s so far into his role as tough cop Frank Hardballer that he’s lost sight of reality.
Astrid (Ortega), meanwhile, is having first-love assignations with the sexy Jeremy (Arthur Conti), a guy who is not as he first appears.
So, plot coming at us from every direction, none of it particularly consequential. Put away your adult toys and surrender to the inner child, that’s what Burton and co want us to do and that’s the best way to watch this film, as a series of gag in the Wile E Coyote style.
The best running one is the various hard-luck cases Burton keeps returning to, the newly dead waiting to be processed on the other side – among them a man with his head missing, a woman with a spear through her neck, a Santa Claus who looks like he crawled down a chimney into a roaring fire and a contortionist locked inside the water-filled tank he obviously died in.
There is one standout sequence, too, when the cast all dance in as near to the ballet style as they can manage to the Richard Harris version of MacArthur Park – which is in song what Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in film, a mad overblown trifle.
Sandworms arrive at the climax of it, since why not?
It’s a brilliant kids movie. That seems to be the vital thing to remember going in – it’s for kids. Don’t be too judgy. Surrender and enjoy!
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
