Does ‘Beetlejuice’ bear repeating?
I recently rewatched the original Beetlejuice (1988) on a PAL flight, where it seems to exist eternally in the airline’s “Blast from the Past” menu, and was immediately caught up again in what a unique little comic gem it is: from the L.L. Bean jokes to the commentary on New York ‘80s art to the floating performance of Harry Belafonte’s Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora) at the final credits. Of course, all of it driven by a very possessed performance by Michael Keaton.
We’re told by Keaton that one thing that drew out his demonically inspired take on spook-for-hire Betelgeuse—essentially a nonstop eruption of profane, comical riffs—was director Tim Burton allowing him to tour the surreal, handmade sets he’d designed for the shoot. Keaton would walk among the Afterlife offices—with its skewed hallways and cramped Waiting Room—and find plenty of material to spiel off of. “A lot of it is the visuals and the visual jokes,” the actor says now. “It’s really interesting how much people react so positively to just pure imagination from Tim.”
Some of that anarchic, homemade energy survives in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a sequel set 35 years later and centered around the same house the Deetz family moved into after its unfortunate owners, the Maitlands (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin), drowned in a nearby creek and hung around the attic as J. Crew-attired ghosts.
The Deetzes are down to Delia (Catherine O’Hara), daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder), and her own teen daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega); dad Charles (Jeffrey Jones) is out of the picture, half-eaten by a shark and replaced by paintings, Claymation sequences and puppets (more on why later).
Delia and Lydia decide to hold Charles’ funeral at the still-standing (now-shrouded) Deetz home set in the same rural Connecticut townscape that looks like a hand-built model from the original. Lydia’s now one of those TV reality show ghost hunters, and her new age-y, ponytailed manager (Justin Theroux) does the thing of saying Betelgeuse’s name in the attic three times and, lo, the demon pops out of the Maitland’s model town once again. Keaton, still in pancake makeup and raccoon eyeliner, doesn’t seem to have aged from his undead state in the original. The riffs are perhaps a beat slower, but when he’s on, he’s fire.
In fact, the reliable trio of Ryder/O’Hara/Keaton make this a nostalgic revisit. There is that nagging feeling of being set up for a joke that never really materializes, but most of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels so tossed off—the way the best comic lines are—that you kind of forgive the thievery from the past. Day-O pops up again, at Charles’ funeral, and the thing that’s never really talked about (actor Jones, sadly, is now a registered sex offender) is somehow subsumed in a through line that keeps him out of the picture, mostly. The Maitlands are nowhere in sight either (Davis pointing out that her character would have to remain the same age as when she died 35 years before, so… maybe she’ll pass?).
Nevertheless, Burton’s hand-built model is now populated by new spooks like Betelgeuse’s old flame Delores (Monica Bellucci) and B-movie star Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe) who have their own elaborate riffs. At times, Burton summons the same feel of unexpected oddity: You never quite know what’s around the corner, though when I heard there was a “Soul Train” in the Afterlife, I knew a disco-dancing sequence modeled after the ‘70s TV show had to be coming up. All in all, it’s way more fun than, say, Burton’s Dark Shadows, because the original Beetlejuice—his second feature after Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure—had an “anything goes” spirit. Sly digs at contemporary culture are one common thread: While Beetlejuice had its riffs on bad art and Memphis-style furnishings, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has a chapel full of social “influencers” literally sucked into their cell phones.
There’s also quite a bit more gore and gross-out stuff here, which may be a sign of how movie tastes have changed. And there’s some reflectiveness about the passage of time, shown in odd little choices—whether it’s the ‘90s vinyl in Astrid’s new boyfriend’s attic, or the use of Richard Harris’ MacArthur Park (added solely, we conclude, for the chance to film a cake left out in the rain). Ortega, who worked so well for Burton in Netflix’s Wednesday, is largely here to bring continuity to the story and also put young asses in cinema seats. She’s appropriately eye-rolling and Audrey Plaza-like, though lacking young Winona’s melancholic vulnerability.
We hear Burton had contemplated doing a Beetlejuice sequel as early as 1992, something along the lines of Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian (there is no genre Burton will not try to warp with his Goth sensibility), but he (wisely?) chose to wait until he had the right material for a story, something Keaton could sink his team into. Totally on-brand, the director describes bringing this world back to life as like attending “a weird wedding or funeral or reunion or something.”
It is a fun ride for fans, with its twisted sensibility bringing on some fresh laughs, though at the rate of one sequel every three decades, it’s not quite clear that Beetlejuice bears… threepeating.