Review | Beetlejuice is back for more in ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’
Photo Collage by Emma Johnson, Staff Photographer
It’s no secret that Hollywood is in the middle of a frenzy of franchises at the moment. Sure, any summer movie season is bound to have some sequels, remakes and reboots. It’s par for the course, but at this point, the number of characters and stories that are dragged from the depths of cinematic history to be paraded around in the name of nostalgia and box office numbers are getting ludicrous.
We said goodbye to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine only seven years ago, and he’s here once again. Those xenomorphs just can’t stay away, can they? Who would still care about the status of characters from a movie from nearly 40 years ago? When is “it’s been too long” not long enough? Alas, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is not that breaking point. It exists somehow perfectly at the nexus between feeling as if the filmmakers waited just long enough to revisit Tim Burton’s wacky vision of the afterlife and yet as if no time has passed at all since we last visited that world. It’s as much a celebration of the spirit of the original film as it is one of the fact that those involved get to do it all again.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” sees Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder, in the role that first made her famous), who, in the years since we last saw her, has become a prominent television personality who specializes in dealing with unfriendly paranormal visitors plaguing the lives of the living. She still has regular visions of the spirits of the formerly living and has never fully escaped the titular trickster who came into her life all those years ago, but she doesn’t have time for that. An unexpected death in the family brings Lydia’s circle together: her mother, Delia (Catherine O’Hara, also returning), her producer and wannabe husband, Rory (Justin Theroux), and her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who’s just as sullen as she was all those years ago and entirely skeptical of her mom’s whole schtick. A deceitful ghoul (not the titular one, however) and an incantation gone wrong send Astrid to the afterlife and draw Lydia back into the paranormal fray. She’s forced to enlist the services of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) to help her navigate the unfamiliar, unpredictable plain. It’s Beetlejuice — you better believe some hijinks ensue.
I want to establish from the offset that they really got this one right. This movie bears such reverence for the past and yet is so unattached to preserving it. No allegiance to what has come before is worth more than the fun possible in blowing it all up in the name of a great comedic beat. Welcome to the world of Burton, where a moving moment where a mother and daughter overcome the loss of a loved one through their afterlife misadventures can coexist with an office full of shrunken-headed underlings running around and causing mayhem. When everything’s at an 11, the sentimental and the silly, it all works.
Burton has assembled a formidable ensemble to dive back into this world. Keaton as the signature ghost with the most, there’s nothing better. I was recently gobsmacked to find out Keaton is in the original film for a grand total of under 20 minutes, and here, he’s similarly used sparingly but never unmemorably. It’s genuinely astonishing how easily he slips back into this role and the Juice’s striped suit. He makes it look so easy. Like most of the best parts of this movie and its predecessor, it’s inexplicable but undeniably effective. He’s cinematic adrenaline. When he comes on screen, you have no idea what’s next on his roster of gags and antics, and to maintain that for such an iconic character is a testament to Burton’s imagination and Keaton’s sheer chops.
Another highlight is Willem Dafoe, finally working with Burton and playing Wolf Jackson, a once-living action movie star now a dead detective on Betelgeuse’s trail and missing a sizable chunk of his skull. First of all, how Dafoe and Burton haven’t worked together until now is beyond me, but more than that, I’m so happy they did. Jackson isn’t an especially crucial character. Maybe the most amusing part is he basically does nothing of importance for the entire film, made more amusing by his own inflated self-importance as he preaches to his squad of trusted underworld officers. This is the kind of movie this is. Sometimes, whole characters are basically reduced to single goofs or reversals. It’s a movie that refuses to take the obvious path, opting for something far more irreverent.
I can’t say this is the best film of the year, but I’m hard-pressed to think of another movie that is this motivated by pure jubilance at every turn. There’s just such energy in the fact that the people who made the original film a classic get to come back to this material that is so beloved. “Top Gun: Maverick,” which also returned to pick up a story that hadn’t been continued in nearly four decades, was more of a reinvention, rewriting the sacred text it was spinning-off of. This is a different exercise — a dip back into a familiar pond for most involved, no one’s missing a beat and yet, seeing them back at it after so long is such a treat. Death has never been the end of the adventure in the world of Beetlejuice, and this movie’s no different. It’s nice to see it has this active pulse after so much time in the casket.
