It’s difficult to fully convey how groundbreaking Beetlejuice was when it premiered 36 years ago. Tim Burton’s second feature film followed the charming and quirky Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which had been released three years earlier. However, that film, with its warm and whimsical style, did little to prepare audiences for the German Expressionist-inspired spectacle that Beetlejuice delivered in 1988. Burton’s sophomore effort, bursting with dark and delightfully irreverent humor, arrived fully realized and nearly flawless.
Here was a tale told mostly indoors. Apart from the opening moments of the film, which dramatize the death of its main characters (and a couple of brief but instantly iconic, Dune-like desert encounters), all of Beetlejuice’s action takes place inside. After all, it was a story about “bio-exorcism.” Our recently deceased main characters, a married couple played by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin, scrubbed from this sequel, try to scare away the NYC yuppies who bought their gorgeous country Victorian house. (The film’s original title was House Ghosts – get it?) Scenes not unfolding in the home’s attic or dining room occurred in an afterworld brimming with neon grotesquerie and the all-too-familiar tedium of a DMV.
What made Beetlejuice special was its ability to take everyday domestic life and suddenly transform it into something fantastical. By contrast, Burton’s uneven but cleverly titled sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, broadens its scope and introduces so many new settings that it disconnects itself from the original. In fact, we don’t even return to the house from the first film until about 30 minutes in, making the sequel feel more like a continuation of a tonally different, utterly conventional movie.
The film opens in a New York City television studio, where Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is now the host of a paranormal reality show called Ghost House—fitting, given her ability to occasionally interact with spirits. She’s romantically involved with her manager (Justin Theroux, miscast in the role). Meanwhile, her stepmother Delia (played by the brilliant Catherine O’Hara, essentially channeling her Moira Rose character from “Schitt’s Creek”) is also in New York, preparing to open an art show where her own image is both its inspiration and primary medium. News soon arrives that Lydia’s father, Charles, has met a tragic end in the jaws of a shark. (Jeffrey Jones, Charles in the original, does not reprise the role due to some gross, ahem, “legal issues.”)
Charles’ death kicks off the action of the movie, sending Lydia and Delia back to Winter River, Connecticut to hold a funeral, and maybe even a wedding. Lydia’s daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who insists her mother is not a true medium but a huckster fraud, is pulled from boarding school. So, three generations of Deetz women at last return to the iconic setting where most of Beetlejuice took place.
And then there’s the Ghost-with-the-Most himself, who appears to be managing a full-fledged bio-exorcism firm, where business is booming. Michael Keaton’s performance as Betelgeuse (he spells his name like the red supergiant located in the Orion constellation) in the original picture was a masterclass in controlled chaos—he was manic, unpredictable, and utterly magnetic. Time has sanded down some of that spikiness, but Keaton is still bringing gusto to one of film’s great fictional characters. It’s clear he’s having a blast.
I won’t spoil the specifics of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but what follows are three parallel plots between the demon himself (stalked by a former love), Lydia (stage-managed by her current love) and Astrid (driven into the arms of a potentially new love). The three threads clumsily intertwine between the real world and the afterworld.
Since so much of Beetlejuice – the visual gags, character designs, musical numbers – have endured decades after its release, Burton has quite the henhouse to harvest Easter eggs. There are many callbacks. You can tell this isn’t just a cash grab. Burton seems to relish in the goodwill his masterpiece has built up over the years. And judging by the advance screening I attended, fans are eager for what he’s now delivering.
If only the film were more focused. Any one of the three aforementioned main stories could have been the centerpiece of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Instead, they compete for our attention and, at least in one case, peter out unceremoniously. Betelgeuse and Lydia cooperate on a mission, just as they did in the ’90s animated series and the Broadway musical. Too bad that team-up isn’t the central conceit of the film.
Most times, returning to the well after multiple decades results in peril – see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. On rare occasions, there’s an opportunity to best your predecessor – see Top Gun: Maverick. And then there’s that something in between: the chance for audiences to revisit the characters they love in a just OK sequel – see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Or, don’t.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
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