Still the Ghost With the Most? - Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Reviewed

We recently watched the 1988 Beetlejuice with Glory, as she had very little recollection of watching it on video as a youngster. It holds up pretty well, actually, and it is fun to remember what a breath of fresh air Tim Burton was at that time, going from Pee Wee's Big Adventure in '85 to Beetlejuice, Batman and Edward Scissorhands in thre successive years. I started running hot and cold with him as a director around Mars Attacks, well before this College Humor video articulated precisely why much better than I ever could.

Anyhow, we all enjoyed it, and I appreciated reading the trivia on IMDb about how little the studio understood Beetlejuice, trying to convince Burton to rename it Ghost House, to which he countered with Scared Sheetless...and was horrified when they almost went with that instead.

Knowing that, as well as the fact that Michael Keaton doesn't do a lot of sequels but has wanted to do one to Beetlejuice for ages now, and learning that Winona Ryder had a shooting exemption for the very possibility of this movie placed into her Stranger Things contract almost a decade ago, Audrey and I decided to check out the sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice last Tuesday.

So, first the bad news - it is not as good as the original. How could it be? The first one was not just an unprecedented blend of comedy and mild horror, it had its own remarkably unique take on the afterlife, with its rules and bureaucracy and suicided staffers. Every time you turned around Burton and his writers were throwing something new and unusual at you, whether it was procedural or another fascinating character.

It really feels like the first half of this movie is devoting too much time for the setup, but when it finally hits its stride, it becomes almost as entertaining as the first one which is still pretty entertaining. 

Set 30+ years after the first movie, Lydia Deetz (Ryder) now hosts a cheesy supernatural reality show called Ghost House (ha!) and is estranged from her teenaged daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega). Stepmother Delia Deetz (the sublime Catherine O'Hara) draws the family back together to the old homestead in Winter River when she learns her husband Charles (the now-incarcerated convicted and largely shunned Jeffrey Jones in the original) has survived a jet crash in the Pacific, only to have been eaten by a shark. 

Part of the reason the first half of the film feels underwhelming is there is just not enough Beetlejuice (72 year-old Michael Keaton!) in it, and when he is, he is not given nearly enough to do. It had me concerned that maybe the role is too much for even the most committed septuagenarian, but I needn't have worried. Once he gets more opportunities to interact with the rest of the main cast, there are not too many wasted moments - after all, Keaton says this is his all-time favourite character. And the Frederico Fellini-inspired backstory sequence is absolutely marvellous.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice also lacks a lot of the living/unliving tension of the first film, where half the angst came from watching the adorably ghostly Maitlands come to grips with their new (after)lives, while Lydia struggled with her own existence in the real world - containing Beetlejuice was almost a secondary consideration. 

This largely familiar cast is rounded out by Delia's producer and partner Rory (Justin Theroux), who is just as new-age cringey as Otho in the original; Monica Bellucci as the mysterious Delores, now hunting for Beetlejuice, and Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson, an afterlife cop (originally an actor) trying to contain an uncontainable situation.

Now the tension is all on the living side of the equation, with the exception of Delores' pursuit of the title character, which never feels that threatening, honestly. But resolving the relationships between Lydia and her boyfriend and her daughter feels high stakes enough to keep you going. Astrid's potential romance with a bookish outsider (with a mop of dark hair and unconventional musical tastes who can't wait to leave his small town? in a TIM BURTON movie? I am shocked!) is a fun diversion, as is Delia coming to grips with being a widow by experiencing it as artistically and in as many media as possible. 

And I think we can keep this review spoiler-free but still mention offhandedly that those looking for a bizarre retro musical number will not be disappointed...or maybe they will, depending on how they feel about Richard Harris as a vocalist. Nothing could equal "Day O."  Nuff said! 

Anyhow, in the end, we all came out less surprised and delighted as we did the first time around in the '80s, but still thoroughly entertained. Best of all, it doesn't smack of desperation or selling out like some other decades-later sequels seem to. If you liked the first Beetlejuice, I think you will enjoy Beetlejuice Beetlejuice as well.

I only wish they could wait 30 more years before rounding out the trilogy as I suspect they might.