'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' review: Sequel can't capture original's macabre magic
Michael Keaton stars in "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice." Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
PLOT A professional medium re-encounters a demonic figure from her youth.
CAST Michael Keaton, Jenna Ortega, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara
RATED PG-13 (gore, strong language, adult humor)
LENGTH 1:44
WHERE Area theaters
BOTTOM LINE Tim Burton’s sequel to 1988’s "Beetlejuice" isn’t undead, but it’s only half-alive.
Tim Burton’s "Beetlejuice" was quite a strange delight in 1988. Centered on a pampered goth teen, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), who moves into a haunted house and nearly marries the trickster demon Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), the movie struck the perfect balance between classic horror, edgy humor and Disney cuteness. It turned Ryder into an alt-culture darling, gave Keaton a highly memorable role and established Burton as one of those distinctive directors whose last name would be often followed by “-esque."
What happens when you try to recapture the magic of such an original film? The answer is "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice."
First, the good news: Ryder returns to play the grown-up Lydia, now a "psychic mediator" with a successful TV show and a gothy daughter of her own, Astrid (Jenna Ortega, of Netflix’s "Wednesday"). These two work well together, one Burton star passing the torch to another. ("Wednesday" is a Burton production created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who also wrote this sequel.) The great Catherine O’Hara is back, too, making the most of her role as Lydia’s stepmom, Delia, an endearingly preposterous New York artiste. (Delia’s primal scream videos really do belong in a gallery.)
What about Jeffrey Jones as Charles, Lydia’s hapless dad? Jones hasn’t worked much since registering as a sex offender following a 2002 arrest on charges of possessing child pornography (later dropped). The film distances itself by killing off his character, a bit over-elaborately, in a stop-motion animated flashback; Charles’ funeral is why the Deetz women have gathered at the old house in Winter River, Conn., where they first encountered the trickster-demon Betelgeuse.
It would be tough to make a movie that Keaton can’t shine in (though many have tried). He slides easily back into his role as Betelgeuse, the puckish huckster and tireless skirt-chaser — a lowlife of the afterlife. He’s on the run from his dead wife, the witchy Delores (Monica Belluci). Reminded that she is a powerful soul-sucker, he replies with a leer, "You can say that again."
Like many sequels, "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" is made of several small stories that don’t quite add up to one. There’s the mother-daughter story, but also a mother-boyfriend story (Justin Theroux plays Rory, Lydia’s smarmy producer and beau) and daughter-boyfriend story (featuring a seductive Arthur Conti in his feature-film debut as Jeremy, a local misfit). Another story gets totally forgotten (what happened to the French graffiti artist?) and yet another just confuses things (Willem Dafoe plays Wolf Jackson, a dead cop-show actor who now runs the Afterlife Crime Unit). To keep us on our toes, Burton pushes the gore — and language — to the PG-13 limit; very young children may not giggle at the spilled intestines, newly-birthed demons and Delores’ shriveled-up victims.
"Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" has its clever moments and jump-scare laughs, but in the end it can’t recreate the macabre magic of the original. It’s a victim of sequelitis, an all-too-common disease.
WHAT CRITICS SAY
Here's what other critics are saying about "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice":
The zippy pacing, buoyant energy and steady stream of laugh-out-loud moments hint at the joy Burton appears to have found in revisiting this world, and for anyone who loved the first movie, it’s contagious. — The Hollywood Reporter
A rat's nest of callbacks and plot, so jumbled and overstuffed it’s almost abstract. It’s yet another legacy sequel that serves as sad testament to the original film’s ingenuity.— Vanity Fair
Though uneven, the film shows Burton is back in the business of creating spooky spectacle as he crafts interesting echoes between the two films. — USA Today
What’s missing is not simply surprise, or the pleasurable shock of a new kind of ghost comedy. It’s the near-complete absence of verbal wit, all the more frustrating since Keaton is ready to play, and he’s hardly alone. — Chicago Tribune
'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' manages to avoid the feeling that its only obligation is to dutifully run through everything familiar one more time. Instead, watching it is a small but significant relief, like reconnecting with an estranged friend. — New York Magazine/Vulture
Most Popular
Top Stories
