From just casually scrolling on the internet, it seems like so many people have heralded Beetlejuice Beetlejuice— the much-delayed sequel to Tim Burton’s 1988 horror comedy Beetlejuice— as a return to form for the director, in no small part due to its irreverent sense of humor and generous employment of practical effects. But watching the movie, I couldn’t help but feel like it was more like Burton sitting in between two modes: the weird renegade who was fired by Disney and made his feature debut with the hysterically odd and wildly original comedy Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and the studio shill who appears to be merely drifting through a series of ugly, sub-par remakes and adaptations.
A Beetlejuice sequel has been in development hell pretty much since the original film debuted to widespread critical and commercial acclaim (early tentative concepts included Beetlejuice in Love and Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian). It’s a shame that what we finally got (this film’s title a play on the fact that if you utter Betelgeuse’s name three times he appears) isn’t as fun or clever or risk-taking as those previous projects sounded. Set in the current year, 36 years after the first film, one-time goth girl and aspiring photographer Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is putting her strange and unusual ability to see paranormal entities where most normal humans cannot to use as the host of a popular supernatural talk show titled Ghost House. She’s dating her slimy producer Rory (Justin Theroux), is estranged from her teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) who still blames her for the loss of her father, and occasionally has visions of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), the crude ghost who tried to marry her as a teenager. She’s called back to Winter River and the old Maitland home (the fact that the ghosts Adam and Barbara, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, no longer haunt the home is conveniently explained away) after her father Charles dies in a freak accident (an easy way to excise actor Jeffrey Jones, who has since been charged with possessing child pornography, from the project). There, Lydia reunites with Astrid and her batty artist stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara), but the story from there fast becomes too convoluted to succinctly summarize. Astrid takes up with a local boy, Jeremy (Arthur Conti), she meets when she crashes her bike into the base of his tree house. Rory proposes a hurried, Halloween-night wedding to Lydia. Delia finds her own weird methods of mourning her husband, and Betelgeuse slouches around the afterlife until he’s summoned for assistance— for a price.
Alfred Gough and Miles Miller are credited as writers on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, although Seth Grahame-Smith (who collaborated with Burton on his maligned 2012 Dark Shadows adaptation, and also penned the horror-mashup novels and screenplays of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) shares a story credit. That’s not to mention the numerous writers hired to write abandoned iterations of the sequel. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s plot is just way too overstuffed, without even touching on some very fun but very unnecessary supporting players who drift in and out of the movie so often it’s easy to forget they were even there to begin with between appearances. I’m thinking of Monica Bellucci, who plays Betelgeuse’s vengeful ex-wife Delores and whose introduction in the film— a homage to classic B monster movies, despite an unfortunately out-of-place “Tragedy” by the Bee-Gees needle drop— is as giddily entertaining as her subsequent performance. And I’m thinking of Willem Dafoe’s Wolf Jackson, a B action movie star before an on-set accident killed him who has parlayed those skills he believes he has into becoming an investigator in the afterlife. Even Danny DeVito pops up for one scene as a dead janitor, and perpetual that-guy Burn Gorman plays the off-kilter preacher of Winter River. Even the performers reprising their roles from the original film appear genuinely game, not as if they are only there to cash a check (a recurring issue with legacy sequels). Keaton in particular slips back into his iconic character in voice and manner so easily it’s as if he’s been playing him every day since 1988. If the film makes one sterling story choice, it’s maintaining Betelgeuse as a chaos-creating supporting player with minimal screen time, as opposed to elevating him to a lead character (which would have been an all-too easy trap to fall in to).
The main thing to recommend Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, however, is its exhilarating use of practical effects (that renowned visual effects artist Neal Scanlan supervised the creature effects is surely a contributing factor in their success). From returning favorites like the sandworm to new weirdos like a creepy-cute Betelgeuse baby, the tangible visuals lend the film a special sort of throwback charm that so many current movies lack. And yet, there’s still a sterile quality to the film overall. From the opening shot, Burton is clearly straining to replicate the magic of that first movie (his second feature film as a director). The camera soars over the town of Winter River before smoothly transitioning to a miniature of the town that is kept in the Maitlands’ attic. But Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t offer up the same sly critique of suburban life that the first film had, first in its portrayal of the Maitlands’, and then of the Deetzs’, as urban fish-out-of-water in a conservative small town. That wouldn’t be an issue if the rest of the more thoughtful themes the film sets up weren’t so underwritten. This is especially true of the fractured mother/daughter relationship between Lydia and Astrid, which is disappointingly resolved in an abrupt and throwaway fashion. Then again, shoving Lydia into this lane feels like a disservice to her character in the first place; I’m partial to Ryder’s feelings about where Lydia ended up after the conclusion of Beetlejuice, a spinster living in the Maitlands’ attic. Where Beetlejuice feels edgy, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels safe, relying on the requisite homages to classic horror (everything from Caligari to Mario Bava) and attempting to mask its routine story choices with an irreverent sense of humor and eye-catching special effects. It isn’t working, and the result is less “Burton is back” and more “Burton is still struggling to capture what he so clearly loved about filmmaking in the first place.”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 104 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Katie at the Movies 
Although I enjoyed the film, I do agree with you. The plot is overfull,with its no less than four foes, it has none of the unsettling edginess of the first movie, and the plot lines come to an unconvincing end all too quickly, but I senses the joy in the actors playing their roles, in the special effects and even in Danny Elfman’s score, and these rescued the film for me.
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