Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

This review may contain spoilers!

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a sequel to the 1988 film, Beetlejuice, and reunites us with the Deetz family a couple of decades later. The death of Lydia's father prompts the reunion of three generations of Deetz in mourning and invites the return of an unsavoury Afterlife figure who has not moved on.

This felt like a complete send all the way back to the 80s. And not in a manner that left this film feeling outdated, but rather a complete love letter to a time when Tim Burton was riding high and knocking out some of his most memorable cinematic triumphs. This film is one of those incredibly tonal throwbacks, I felt like I was watching a film from another time polished with the scale of modern cinematic tech. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice takes the set-up from the first film and finds a neat comedic family angle to take us on the next adventure. We get to see a range of wild personalities in our living cast alone. Lydia is now using her otherworldly gifts for a psychic medium TV show, while also being manipulated by her toxic boyfriend: Rory. Lydia's father suddenly dying pushes her back into contact with her eccentric step-mother, Delia, and her estranged teen daughter, Astrid. The way this unusual family is pushed together, full of conflict and unresolved feelings makes for a great boiling pot. When Beetlejuice decides to pull Lydia back in and the same time Astrid finds a boyfriend, the plot really ramps up. I loved how this film had an engaging ticking time bomb that made it all feel quite urgent for the main cast. The Afterlife is even zanier, the novelty and clever gags are everywhere you look. The strength of this film is just how constantly funny it is, it really stands out as the sort of film that has considered comedic timing at every turn. Even the ultimate resolution to all the major conflicts are quite slapdash, spontaneous and fun. 

Tim Burton's style is woven all the way through this, and he has pulled out all the stops. The camera weaves and moves through alongside character performances, it is also well-utilised to punctuate all the visual gags scattered throughout. The special effects are impressive on a couple of levels. They look like the practically composed effects of the original film with only some polish to enhance how it all looks. The other component is the variety at hand; scenes like Delores stapling herself back together or the people being pulled into their cellphones really stood out for me as truly unique to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The score for the film has that fun tone that is classic of old school family movies, but it has that Halloween seasonal twang which only enriches it. The soundtrack is an entire knock out, with various covers of 'MacArthur Park' really making the whole thing come alive.

 

Michael Keaton, who played Beetlejuice, feels like he has returned home when it comes to this role; Keaton's presence as Beetlejuice is uncanny, and it might just be one of the best roles in his career. Winona Ryder, who played Lydia Deetz, has really found a natural pathway to ageing up this role to estranged motherhood; Ryder is still playing a fighter who has had a lot of fight taken out of her by loss and crappy men over her fictional years. Jenna Ortega, who played Astrid Deetz, is a bit more of a classic protagonist well suited to the wild adventures of a Burton film; Ortega leans into the aloof loner who can't connect with her Mum quite well. Justin Theroux, who played Rory, was absolutely hilarious as one of the sleaziest roles in the film; Theroux as the not so subtle manipulative boyfriend wound up being a great gag. Willem Dafoe, who played Wolf Jackson, looks like he might be having the most fun out of the whole cast; Dafoe toes the thin line between deceased actor and afterlife cop in what is one of the biggest scene stealers of the film. Monica Bellucci, who played Delores, is like the anti-Beetlejuice; an imposing Afterlife threat you have reason to be terrified of. Santiago Cabrera, who played Richard, is the surprising heart connection of the film; Cabrera comes as a feel good moment uniting two of the protagonists for the better. Danny DeVito, who played the Janitor, is more of a tremendous creature performance in this; DeVito's lumbering ghoul is a fun scene and a memorable introduction to Bellucci.

However, the best performance came from Catherine O'Hara, who played Delia Deetz. This character feels like a total acknowledgement of O'Hara's work as Delia in the first film, paired with her iconic reputation from Schitt's Creek. Delia is a high maintenance artist, who delights in dumping both her boasts of high living and her trauma on those around her. Delia feels like a character who rarely reaches out to those she loves, yet she is oddly present for those she loves. Over the years this is a role who has surprisingly morphed into someone with a lot of heart, with an eccentric exterior. O'Hara is quite simply the funniest performer in a host of hilarious performers, I could watch a whole film of Delia and her art career, I really could.

This film is something I really needed, a comedic adventure that really had you laughing from start to finish. But a film like that still is guided by a story, and the overarching plot was great, but it was bogged down by a lot of individual character narratives feeding into it. Across this film, you have an incredibly large amount of sub-plots of varying length, with varying focus and importance to the overall experience. What disappoints me is that these plots aren't all very well fleshed out, and worse, most of them end quite abruptly or without much resolution at all. Some feel almost purposeless in their journey and feed the film with plenty of laughs, only to not end in a fully realised narrative manner.

Arthur Conti, who played Jeremy, is a bit of an obvious bad guy twist performance; Conti also doesn't feel like the most experienced hand and delivers in the same tone across the movie. Burn Gorman, who played Father Damien, feels like a dry piece of wit that just doesn't really land; Gorman's whole role feels a bit too present in this when really it didn't need to be more than a background figure.

What a treat to see Tim Burton back on top form and better than ever. I would give Beetlejuice Beetlejuice an 8/10.