‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’: The Ghost With The-Not-So-Much

Did you really think a sequel to a 36-year-old film would feel fresh? Tim Burton’s disinterment of the title character from his zany 1988 haunted-house classic radiates good vibes but doesn’t quite have the quickened pulse of its spooky-kooky predecessor. Twice as plot-heavy with only half the originality, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice works double-time doling out macabre laughs while it weaves in semi-sincere moments of heartbreak and grief among an overstuffed cast of misfits. 

It’s buoyant, though, relentlessly silly, even sort of sweet—and, compared to today’s bloated blockbusters, admirably brief, coming in only a few minutes’ longer than the slender original. The only aspect of this Halloween hoot that really feels eternal is Burton’s everlasting affection for the ghoulish, a stylish sensibility he hasn’t explored with such visible relish in decades. Cue bug-eyed monster faces, goth couture, Caligari hallways, and droll musings from impaled specters. But it’s less a return to form than a glory-days victory lap.

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE  ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Tim Burton
Written by: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar
Starring: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe
Running time: 105 mins

What a rush, though, to return to Winter River, Connecticut, and again see the skewed Victorian house on a hill where emo teen Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) once contended with some seriously paranormal activities. This time, Lydia is a shell-shocked celebrity, the Elvira-like host of reality TV show “Ghost House” that investigates average homeowners and their spectral shenanigans. She’s still managing the PTSD fallout from Beetlejuice’s antics as well as her estrangement from disaffected prep-school daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega). Lydia ended up divorcing Astrid’s father Richard (Santiago Cabrera) before he died in an Amazonian boating accident, and Lydia refuses to contact his spirit to console Astrid. 

A funeral brings the family back together when Lydia’s dad Charles dies on a bird-watching expedition that ends in a plane crash and subsequent shark attack. And so newly-minted widow Delia (Catherine O’Hara), now a successful performance artist, insists on turning the occasion into a “grief collective” to help them unpack their sorrow.

Among the bereaved is Lydia’s boyfriend Rory, who met her a few years before at a yoga-therapy survivor’s retreat and now produces her show—while trying to keep her from popping pills to steady her chronically wracked nerves. Rider’s whole approach to playing Lydia, incidentally, is essentially to look simultaneously shaken, shocked, perplexed, scared, distressed, and bemused—an approach best summarized by her heavily memed reaction to David Harbour’s Stranger Things SAG Award acceptance speech. 

Where’s Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice? Good question. Lydia keeps seeing him in brief IRL hallucinations, even though he’s now a pencil-pushing “Afterlife Manager” in the bureaucratic underworld, overseeing a half-dozen shrunken-head office drones while answering missives sent via pneumatic tubes. And Beetlejuice is now under threat from the re-constituted body of his former wife Delores (Monica Bellucci), who cursed and fatally poisoned Beetlejuice 600 years ago, just before he hacked her into pieces. “We parted ways,” he sneers. She’s a soul-sucker, someone who can kill a dead person—just go with it—and she’s roaming the halls of the Afterlife trying to find Beetlejuice and eliminate him forever. 

Not enough plot yet? Don’t worry, there’s another twist when Astrid meets a local boy and finds her fate entwined with a dark secret. And Rory proposes to Lydia, insisting on a quickie wedding. And hammy afterlife detective Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe) is trying to stop Delores before she gets to Beetlejuice. By the way, where are the previous film’s O.G. ghosts Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin)? “We found a loophole and they moved on,” explains Lydia. Convenient.

You’d think, in a film so enthusiastically named after a trickster demon, that the apparition of actual souls would override clinical soul-searching. But Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a film where medication-tinged therapy gets more lip service than medium-driven seances. “Beetlejuice is a construct of your unpacked trauma,” Rory tells Lydia, while Astrid calls out her mom’s trauma-bonding. The film’s emotional underpinnings gently prod but still prioritize psychoanalysis, making sure spiritual encounters remain punch lines. 

No matter: Burton’s narrative attention seems more focused on having a goofy good time anyway, with repeat visits to the visual-gag-laden afterlife waiting room, as well as a corny conceit involving a literal Soul Train—scheduled stops include the Elysian Fields and the Fires of Damnation—and a mischievous Mario Bava homage in the form of a B&W flashback sequence entirely in subtitled Italian. 

Not since Mars Attacks! has Burton shown this sort of madcap delight in moviemaking, including an extended Danny DeVito cameo that accidentally electrifies Delores back to life—scored to the Bee Gees’“Tragedy”—and a so-dopey-it’s-delicious climax involving Richard Harris’ risible rendition of “MacArthur Park” that doubles as an eyeroll-shrug homage to the original film’s beloved “Day-O” sequence.  

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a messy sequel, and it’s maybe all the more enjoyable for being just that, with a loosey-goosey energy so painfully lacking in Hollywood movies these days. As Astrid says: “The Afterlife is so random!” The story may be sloppy, but its weirdness is wonderful.