Review: BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

The plot is as crowded as the afterlife waiting room in this disappointing sequel.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is Tim Burton’s funniest and most visually inventive film in decades, but don’t get too excited – that’s a low bar. While this sequel to 1988’s beloved comedy finds Burton more playful than he’s been in ages, it suffers from an overstuffed story that leaves its cast adrift and never quite rises above a few chuckles, especially when Betelgeuse himself is off the screen. 

The original Beetlejuice isn’t exactly known for its airtight script, but it benefits from a clear, sitcom-ready premise: newly deceased ghosts must scare annoying new residents out of their home. There are little subplots that sneak in – the couple bonding with a goth teenager; a trickster demon trying to manipulate them – but it’s not too concerned about that, and instead uses that setup to give Burton and his cast plenty of room to make things weird and funny. 

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice features a much more convoluted story. Gone are Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis’ normal-folk ghosts (their absence – likely due to budgetary reasons – is waved off with one line), and the story focuses instead on the eccentric Deetz family. Lydia (Winona Ryder), the goth teen who saw ghosts, is now a goth adult who sees ghosts and hosts a cheesy TV show. She’s widowed and engaged to her slimy producer (Justin Theroux) and there’s tension with her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who’s upset that her mom can seem to see every ghost but that of her dead father. A family tragedy reunites Lydia and her artist mother Delia (Catherine O’ Hara), and they return to their Connecticut home for a “mourning collective.” And wouldn’t you know it, the home’s resident demon, Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) still pines away in the afterlife for Lydia. 

But wait, there’s (so much!) more. Betelgeuse’s ex-wife (Monica Bellucci) has pulled herself together (literally, with staples) and is loose in the afterlife, sucking out souls and intent on getting back with her man. She’s pursued by a cop (Willem Dafoe) who was an actor when he was living, and still loves to strike a pose. Meanwhile, Astrid meets a boy (Arthur Conti) who understands her in ways no one else does, but may have his own tricks up his sleeves. And I haven’t even mentioned the death of a beloved character from the first film who spends most of the movie shuffling around the afterlife in his massacred body, or another beloved character who gets their own post-life shenanigans in the back half of the movie (that, honestly, might have served better as this film’s main focus). 

I understand why Burton and writers Seth Grahame-Smith, Miles Millar and Alfred Gough felt the need to bring back almost the entire cast of the 1988 film (Jeffrey Jones’ absence can be explained with a quick Google search). While it’s best known for its star-making turn from Keaton, Beetlejuice benefits from a wonderful ensemble, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice wants to do the same. And more room for O’Hara to offer Delia’s vapid line readings is fine by me; as could be predicted, O’Hara sells every single one of her punchlines. Ortega is a charmer and slots in nicely to the requisite aloof-but-sensitive teen role. Theroux gets a lot of laughs as a shallow, conniving douchebag, and I like the sexy menace Bellucci brings as this film’s villain. Dafoe only seems to be in the thing because Burton wanted Willem Dafoe in his Beetlejuice sequel, but I’ll never be opposed to seeing him ham it up. The only character who seems badly serviced is Lydia, as it’s a bummer to see the first film’s spunky teen rewritten to be just as cartoonish and self-obsessed as the parents from whom she was rebelling. 

The cast is funny, the problem is that the characters and comedic bits are choked off by the sprawling plot. The film’s pacing lurches to halts to introduce new characters and storylines and bounces around between sporadically amusing comedic sketches that it then moves away from before they can deliver more than a chuckle. I appreciate that, unlike other legacy sequels, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice does more than just rehash the first film, and it finds new nooks and crannies of the afterlife to explore. The problem is that it does so while also tossing it references to the first film and revisiting old gags – they return to that overbooked waiting room so many times – which further lends to the story’s leadenness. And while the first film was anchored to likable characters who felt real, the absence of the Maitlands means that we’re stuck with the film’s more cartoony characters, robbing the film of an emotional center (yes, Ortega’s character is more grounded, but the film’s protagonist is actually Lydia, who has become just as caricatured as the other adults; Ortega’s more of a supporting role). And while I’m a booster of films that come in under two hours, trying to cram in all this story at 105 minutes just means it’s a slog with occasional jokes; it never has the energy to bring all its disparate plot points together with the energy required of farce (the film would likely move quicker if it was longer and had time for these subplots to breathe). 

It’s a shame, because the hints of a funnier and more successful film are there. For starters, Michael Keaton remains energetic, unpredictable and funny as Betelgeuse. He plays the character as less of a huckster than in the first one and more of a pathetic telemarketing manager (he literally runs a call center in the afterlife). He’s still gross and still moves with cartoon energy. While Keaton’s on screen more than he was in the first film, his presence is still limited, and the movie understands he’s best used in smaller doses; it also doesn’t make the mistake of turning Betelgeuse into a lovable good guy. He’s still a trickster, still happy to manipulate to get what he wants and he’s still, at the end of the day, the villain. It’s fun to see Keaton back in the black-and-white suit, and he looks like he’s having a great time. 

And, like I said, Burton seems energized to return to this world after slogging through wretched Disney remakes and YA adaptations. His macabre sense of humor remains intact; once again, the film is full of sight gags about the afterlife denizens’ causes of death (one involving a charred Santa got a good laugh from me). A climactic scene set to the disco hit “MacArthur Park” doesn’t quite hit the highs of the “Banana Boat Song” from the first, but it’s still a wonderfully weird bit. Burton wisely limits his use of CGI and, as much as possible, sticks to practical effects; I particularly liked the way bodies deflate like balloons after Bellucci’s character sucks out their souls. Every once in a while, he hits on a stylistic digression that works, the high point being Betelgeuse lapsing into a French accent and staging his marriage’s backstory as a black-and-white foreign film. There’s also a fun stop-motion sequence early on that fills us in on one character’s tragic demise (if it seems a bit cruel to this character, again, check the actor’s Wikipedia page). And the sets are tactile, sprawling and visually inventive; this would probably work better as a Halloween Horror Night walkthrough than an actual movie. And yes, the sandworms are still stop-motion. 

There’s a good sequel here if you cut through all the meandering plot points that keep it from being so. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice isn’t awful; Burton’s done much, much worse in the last 20 years. And it’s far from the most egregious legacy sequel. But there’s also nothing as energetic, funny and original as what we got in 1988. Beetlejuice is a great ‘80s comedy; this sequel just can’t live up to it.