BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE Review: Back From the Dead, Demented and Delightful

After more than a decade filled with singularly subpar, soulless adaptations (Alice in Wonderland, Dark Shadows, Dumbo), a middling franchise starter that wasn’t (Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children), a perplexingly misjudged, cringe-inducing misfire (Big Eyes), and a half-hearted, stop-motion adaptation of his student short (Frankenweenie), Tim Burton’s career as a pop filmmaker seemed stuck in neutral, his creativity exhausted, his talent diminished, and his skills eroded. It’s a fate that inevitably awaits filmmakers and non-filmmakers alike as they prepare to exit this life for the next one (i.e., mandatory retirement).

It likely awaited Burton too, except the long-mooted sequel to Beetlejuice, aptly titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, finally received the green light from Warner Bros.’s executives to proceed with production after false starts, not to mention countless discarded scripts, stretching back more than 20 years. That decision turned out to be a remarkably fortuitous one, both for Burton as a filmmaker badly in need of artistic rejuvenation, and, of course, for the longtime fans on the other side of the screen who’ve patiently waited for the return of Michael Keaton’s perpetually rotting trickster demon, Betelgeuse, to make his suitably chaotic, anarchic return to the world of the living. 

Where Keaton’s standout character enjoyed minimal screen time in the eponymous titled film 36 years ago, he moves to a more pivotal, central role in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, functioning as the source of rapid-fire verbal humor and physical comedy as well as a catalyst who, however inadvertently and unintentionally, helps the Deetz family, Lydia (Winona Ryder), now the successful host of a basic cable paranormal series, her frazzled stepmother, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), a sculptor-turned-multimedia-artist, and Lydia’s bitterly estranged daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega). he once stalked and haunted to distraction overcome old and new grievances, grief at the newly and not-so-newly departed, and regrets (they have a few), and finally reconcile.

That’s just the thematic throughline, of course. Story-wise, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice initially finds the title character in duck-and-cover mode, evading his onetime corpse bride, Delores (Monica Bellucci), back together in one, stapled piece after centuries spent dissembled, boxed-up, and volcanically upset at the deception that led to her semi-permanent disassembly. Even worse, Delores, a powerful sorceress in her former life, can make the denizens of the afterlife “dead-dead” (as in soul-sucked dead). She’s a (dead) woman on a semi-righteous mission of vengeance, though one who too often disappears for long stretches of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s running time.

Still, Delores makes for a formidable foe, adding supernatural stakes where ordinarily there wouldn’t be any. Delores’s fearsome return also gives Beetlejuice the kick in his stained stripe pants to find Lydia, not so much his long-lost love than a romantic infatuation, in the world of the living. Repeatedly appearing in Lydia's dreams and daytime hallucinations, Beetlejuice won’t take no for an answer; he has eternity to convince Lydia of their suitability as romantic partners.

That and a perfectly timed contrivance that leads the headstrong Astrid, so much her mother’s daughter in outlook and temperament except for her belief in ghosts or the afterlife, into making a pact with a seemingly innocent, innocuous teen-next-door, Jeremy (Arthur Conti), that could lead to her doom. For her part, Lydia seems stuck in an unhealthy co-dependence with her producer-boyfriend, Rory (Justin Theroux), a smug, unauthentic smooth-sayer angling for Lydia’s hand in domestic partnership. It looks headed for a similarly doom-laden end.
 
Written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Wednesday, Spider-Man 2, Smallville), Beetlejuice Beetlejuice aligns Lydia, Astrid, and Delia against Rory, Jeremy, and ultimately, Beetlejuice, delivering a semi-stealthy feminist message minus the usual heavy-handedness, sermonizing, or lack of subtlety. It’s not accidental that one of the few positive representations in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice of non-toxic masculinity, Delia’s recently deceased husband (and Lydia’s father), Charles, stumbles around Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, looking far worse for wear (the half-digested victim of a vicious shark attack), sweetly, if gorily, hoping for a reunion in the afterlife with his beloved wife.

Astrid’s father, Richard (Santiago Cabrera), also among the recently deceased, but oddly absent from Lydia’s contact list of the dead, represents the source of Astrid's estrangement from her mother. He’s also just one more loss, one more point of grief shared by Lydia and Astrid that Beetlejuice will aid in their resolution, albeit through frantic, frenetic, often seemingly unfocused action across the spiritual and physical realms, all of which a reinvigorated Burton, smartly relying on exquisitely detailed costumes, hand-built puppetry, and standalone sets (the bureaucratic afterlife, more a way-station than the traditional convention of Heaven or Hell), brings to brilliant, brightly colored life (or rather after/life).

With expertly timed needle drops, some new, some old(er), all utterly delightfully and ear-worm-worthy, a deep bench cast-wise, each delivering Gough and Millar’s quip-heavy dialogue with pitch-perfect emphasis, mining every line for maximum comedic impact, and top-to-bottom performances from Hall of Fame stars (Keaton, Ryder, O’Hara) and up-and-coming All-Stars (Ortega, especially) and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice proves to be the rare legacy sequel worth the investment of your time, money, and everything in between.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opens Friday, September 6, only in movie theaters, via Warner Bros. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes.