Review: BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

 by Rob DiCristino

It’s that sequel to Beetlejuice you wanted. Enjoy.

Hollywood’s Manbaby Midlife Crisis Jamboree continues with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a legacy sequel to one of the ‘80s most beloved supernatural comedies. It reunites director Tim Burton and composer Danny Elfman with stars Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara. Joining the cast are Jenna Ortega as Lydia’s rebellious daughter, Astrid; Justin Theroux as her self-obsessed fiance, Rory; Monica Bellucci as Beetlejuice’s vengeful ex-wife, Delores; and Willem Dafoe as an actor-turned-undead detective hot on the trail of a mystery that enmeshes them all. The film features a cavalcade of references to the original Beetlejuice and expands on Burton’s twisted vision of the afterlife with new settings and a deepened mythology while retaining the original film’s macabre sense of cartoon mischief. Whereas the titular Mr. Juice was once the chief antagonist, the sequel finds him in more of a frenemy role, with Lydia Deetz (Ryder) enlisting the Ghost with the Most’s help during a crisis that could tear her family apart. He’s happy to oblige — for a price, of course.

That’s about it. But that’s what you want, right? That’s what everyone wants? It’s another movie about Beetlejuice wanting to marry Lydia. It’s another movie about people being made to dance against their will. It’s another movie about a goth teenager raging against her cringy family. They do the “Day-O” song again, this time in a somber choral rendition that caps-off the funeral of Charles Deetz — the deeply-canceled Jeffrey Jones appears only in photos — whose death inspires the family’s return to their Connecticut “Ghost House” in the first place. The sandworms and shrunken-head guys are back, as is the afterlife waiting room and its disinterested attendants. Ghosts and ghouls animated in colorful stop-motion or performed as animatronic puppets remind us of the good ol’ days, as does Burton’s expressionist afterlife architecture, a nod to the director’s early work sure to earn a Rick Dalton point from anyone in the audience old enough to remember it. On paper, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is everything nostalgia-fueled moviegoers could possibly ask for.

And if I sound dismissive of a movie that many people have been waiting more than three decades to finally see, that’s because it’s coming at the tail end of a spectacularly dull and uninspired summer of sequels, reboots, and reimaginings, barely any of which have been competent and absolutely none of which have been necessary. Sequels are not new, of course, and jagoff critics like me have been complaining about their diminishing returns since that guy in the 19th century decided to make ANOTHER movie about some horse at a gallop. But an honest assessment of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice requires an honest assessment of ourselves as a moviegoing public, and the truth is that Burton’s new film is exactly what we all seem to want: It’s a movie that reminds us of how much we love other movies, a movie that bends over backwards to validate our obsessive fandom so we can teach these damned Zoomers about How Movies Used to Be. Seeing the 72-year-old Michael Keaton in that signature makeup fills us with warm reassurance that we’re still relevant, still those kids we were all those years ago.

Is that a good thing? Is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice actually a good movie? If the Harry Belafonte-humming, Hot Topic explosion that was my press screening is any indication, it could absolutely not matter less. These are dark times, and perhaps it’s best that I just let everybody have something that will make them happy. Sure, the film is over-plotted, with screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Milar haphazardly jamming four or five different threads together without any idea of how to make them congeal in a coherent way. Sure, it totally hand-waves the absence of Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis — Lydia says the Maitlands found a “loophole” and moved on — who are far more important to the original film’s success than anyone here seems to acknowledge. Sure, it’s an almost criminal waste of Willem Dafoe and Monica Bellucci, the latter of whom appears in roughly three scenes and has half a line of dialogue. Lydia gets to wear her red wedding dress again, though, and isn’t Lydia getting to wear her red wedding dress again what cinema is really all about?

But I digress: The truth is that you’d be totally forgiven for having fun with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Michael Keaton hasn’t missed a beat in the role, and Burton wisely resists the urge to overburden his undead Bugs Bunny with too much narrative responsibility. Winona Ryder has let Lydia’s teenage angst evolve into a kind of middle-aged malaise, a touch of karma that the movie briefly notices before getting distracted with something else. Justin Theroux understands his assignment, of course, essentially playing Rory as a priggish Stanley Tucci who preys on grieving women like Lydia. It’s another nice bit of subtext the movie waves at on its way to set pieces like the “soul train” — which is exactly what you think it is — but let’s not pretend that the original Beetlejuice was a comprehensive manifesto on mortal traumas, either. No, that was just a goofy comedy that literalized an adolescent’s obsession with death and took vicious — and, with the benefit of hindsight, wildly prescient — shots at post-modern art culture. Oh yeah, this one does that, too.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in theaters now.