Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
Directed by: Tim Burton
Written by: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar
Starring: Catherine O'Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Michael Keaton, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe, Winona Ryder

Beeltejuice is back and up to no good. And this time, he’s no longer a lone operator; he now has staff, an office, and an overhead projector! His workforce all have shrunken heads and anyone who remembers the end of the first film knows what that was all about – which also implies Beetlejuice got out of that encounter with something of a victory. Michael Keaton churns out another excellent performance in one of his signature roles and despite his absence for most of the runtime, no one else chews the scenery with such élan. He breaks rules, he breaks boundaries, he breaks the forth wall (I’d have to say mildly – but how can you break the forth wall “mildly”, I hear you ask? Well, you, dear cinephile, will need to check out Deadpool and Wolverine, you’ll see what I mean).  But, if I am being honest, I didn’t find this outing quite the same from the titular character – he doesn’t hold the same danger as last time. No one gets hurt, nor is he as funny. And the limited time we get with our titular villain, he spends most of the time indulging in tension-free songs. This is not a musical, which would have incurred a significant genre-shift from the last film, but we’re only a chorus away. There was an underlying anger in Keaton’s 1988 performance where Beetlejuice could explode at any time. He was unpredictable, outrageous and an accomplished “Bio-Exorcist”. This time, he carries himself with the energy of a resigned temp. The only thing that seems to light a fire under him is the return of his ex-wifeDelores, played by the ever sensuous Monica Bellucci, portrays Beetlejuices “soul sucking” ex-wife. The joke here is that she literally sucks souls. Delores was heavily featured in the trailers, and you’d reasonably expect her to play a proportionally equivalent role in the film. But trailers are misleading and Monica Belluci is here as something of an extended cameo. She doesn’t get much to do and her best scene is also her first. So, to begin with, her various body parts escape the boxes containing them, she staples herself back together, sucks out Danny Devito’s soul and then starts wandering the afterlife in search of Beetlejuice (how hard is it to find a man you can summon by saying his name three times?). An eagle-eyed fan noticed in the trailer that her characters ring finger was missing. Was this the same ring-finger, replete with ring, that Beetlejuice pulled out of his waistcoat in the first film when he was marrying Lydia? It would appear so. But how then, did the finger get from Beetlejuice’s groomsman attire and back into the boxes containing the dismembered Delores? Am I over thinking this? Anyway, whilst Delores hunts down her estranged husband, another wife also misses her husband.

Delia Deetz is back! And it’s great to see Catherine O’Hara’s return to the big screen. She appears to have no problem whatsoever returning to the role. She is hosting another art-exhibit when she discovers her husband has passed away. Yes, the character of Charles Deetz makes a few “appearances” and, no, Jeffrey Jones is not in the movie for reasons I will leave outside of this review. Suffice to say the claymation sequence of the plane crash followed by a shark attack followed by the headless body wandering the afterlife tide the character over nicely. Delia is distraught and determined to give her former hubby a decent send off. She wants her family at the funeral, but first she must convince her daughter, Lydia, to reconcile the broken relationship between her and her granddaughter.

Jenna Ortega’s Astrid is the new addition to the cast. And she provides a wry-eyed cynicism to the adult goings-on. Unimpressed with her grandmother, and embarrassed by her mother, and thoroughly annoyed by her new prospective step-father, she’d rather be left alone, and that’s where she stumbles into trouble.

Winona Ryder returns as Lydia Deetz, and she’s delightfully “strange and unusual” as always. When we revisit her character, Lydia is the widowed mother of Astrid with her own ghost themed TV show. She’s currently in a new relationship, after Astrid’s father passed away, and this new relationship does not come across as a healthy by any means. Lydia is unsure of herself, of him and the relationship. But one of the binding factors in their coupling is it’s convenience for work. Hmmmm! She’s had issues with drugs after the tragedies that have befallen her and lo, Beetlejuice starts appearing in her mind’s eye. She may be trying to forget about Beetlejuice, but he’s certainly not forgotten about her. He’s sending her visions, appearing as if he’s really there with the living. Lydia thinks its stress related, or the pills – it just has to be anything other than the return of Beetlejuice.

Justin Theroux plays Rory, Lydia’s business and romantic partner. There’s something off about this guy right from the get-go. He’s overly attached, needy and far too emotional. No one takes him seriously, to the point Astrid straight up burbs in his face when he’s talking (lovely Jenna). When he proposes to Lydia at the funeral, my toes curled. It was cringe inducing, but this all gives Beeltejuice something to do in the third act when he “interrupts” the wedding. We later discover he was only dating her for her money. We all know what a Frenemy is, but what would that be called by Lydia being in a relationship with one, is Rory her boyfrenemy?

Santiago Carbrera portrays Richard, Atrids father and Lydia’s former husband. In life, he travelled to Brazil where he then disappeared in the Amazon. In Tim Burton’s afterlife, how we die informs how we look for eternity; Richard is riddled in piranhas (fish claim a lot of husbands in this film). They wriggle all the time, even during the touching heartfelt moments. And it’s here I have a question, remembering the first film, where people who commit suicide become civil servants in the afterlife, we see Richard selling train tickets. I am not going to get into a debate as to whether the rail services in this films afterlife, “Neitherworld”, are publicly owned or privatized, but as he is employed in the afterlife, the assumption is there to be made that he committed suicide, and if he did, I have to say that self-termination by piranha is a damn strange way to go! Also, are the fish that are still gnawing on Richard also dead? He couldn’t have been a piranha’s version of one of their “five-a-day”. Narratively, he serves as a dues ex machine disguised as a family reunion. The father saves his daughter and gets his family out of the afterlife – well done.

Speaking of the dead (certainly not for them), there are no appearances from Geena Davis Barbara Maitland nor Alec Baldwin’s Adam Maitland. The reality of the fact is, ghosts don’t age, and the actors no longer look like they did in 1988. It’s true. Same for me, I was at least two foot shorter back in 1988. And yes, I know Beetlejuice is back, and Michael Keaton has aged beautifully into the role, but the makeup is amazing. I can only assume it’s the same hair. As for the Maitland’s, they “found a loophole” and got to leave their idyllic, “haunted” house. This is both silly and fantastic as it’s very “in-universe” for the bureaucracy of the first film.

I’m a fan of Willem Defoe. There is no other Green Goblin for me. But for this long overdue sequel, Willem Defoe’s “Wolf Jackson” (great name, squandered in this instance) adds to this movies clutter. His secretary, portrayed by Georgine Beedle, “keeps him real”, and aside from looking lost and confused at murder scenes (one would think murder could not be a thing in the afterlife), he really doesn’t have much to do. The exposed brain makeup is fantastic. But unless there’s a deleted scene I am not presently aware of, I’m not sure what the point in his character was. When we get to the finale, he accomplishes nothing. Had his character not been there, nothing would have changed. Beetlejuice shouts the word “freeze”, mocking the police, who all then literally freeze. Please tell me this joke, originally executed to great effect in 1995s “The Mask”, is not the sole purpose for the inclusion of Wolf Jackson.  I feel his role, hunting down Delores and then Beetlejuice (again, say his name three times) pairs well with Monica Bellucci’s. In fact, I think these two roles should have been rolled into one. She’s a soul sucker, but instead of leaving empty skin suits behind, she gains a zombie army searching for Beetlejuice (as I think about this, she was in those boxes since she got to the afterlife during the black plague, and may not have known how to summon Beetlejuice – Willem Defoe has no such excuse). Monica Bellucci could have been terrorizing the afterlife which would have been a good source of tension. Instead, we’re lumbered with the mostly absent ex-wife and Willem Defoe’s detective avoiding each other until the finale. At least Benny Hill had that theme tune going for him.

Arthur Conti plays the sinister Jeremy Frazier. When Astrid seeks solitude from her increasingly insane family, she bumps into a handsome stranger who makes her forget her annoying life for a small while. When she revisits him, clues are dropped for the audience; we never see his parents’ faces, and he has a copy of “Handbook for the recently deceased”. Jeremy turns out to be a villain that forces the main characters to summon Beeltejuice – extreme measures indeed.

The music is great. Danny Elfman is at his most Danny Elfman in this opening score. A pleasant revisiting of the original theme, with a few extra flourishes. Tonally, everything fits with the original.

There are jokes (the Soul Train gag was brilliant), homage’s to the first film and influences here that have crept in from other movies. I’ll start with the obvious one. The sandworms. Any fan of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune will instantly recognise the shaking sands that herald the imminent arrival of a sandworm on Arrakis. The same is true here for the sandworms on Saturn (to quote Jenna Ortega’s Astrid, “the afterlife is random”). I found the plot device of the villainous ghost boyfriend using Astrid living body to get back into the real world at her mortal expense very similar to the “Insidious” films. Lydia Deetz is the first character we see and in classic misdirect, is she in a haunted house, is she inside the model home, what’s going on? Oh no, she’s on television! I was sharply reminded of the opening of Ghostbusters 2 where Peter Venckman is hosting a chat show and lamenting the quality of his guests. It’s a shame really, as one of the things I loved about the first Beetlejuice was its complete originality. There was no other movie like it. But I have heard that there are, broken down to their most basic, only fourteen scripts in Hollywood, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice appears to be a slapped together amalgam of at least three of them!

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