Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

 

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

Director: Tim Burton

Stars: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara

Short Review, no spoilers

The exhumation of a beloved film is a tough task – especially when more than three decades have passed - but mostly Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is very successful and very funny. Surprisingly grislier than the first, it’s pleasingly true to the characters and dark wit of the original and overall a joy, if slightly overloaded at times.

Full Review (spoilers)

Frighteningly, this sequel arrives 36 years after the first and wonderfully original Beetlejuice, so the fact that it is so loyal in tone and the performances so rewarding is impressive. Ironically it means that the film is quite fresh, adopting as it does its characteristic flippancy towards the theme of death and general embrace of things ‘strange and unusual.’ Micheal Keaton gamely dons the black and white suit again and musters the mania to bring the grottily loveable Beetlejuice back in to our sanitised world, and he’s even more disgusting than before. Touchingly though, he still holds a candle for Lydia and, like it or not, she and stepmother Delia are unable to prevent his resurrection back in to their lives. In fact, for all their grimacing complaints, it always seems to be this grubby king of chaos that is needed when all else is lost.

Women are enjoyably pushed forward in to the action but without contrivance. Catherine O’Hara embraces the wonderfully awful Delia again like an old glove, and there is a nice chemistry between her and Winona Ryder’s Lydia, like a resigned acceptance between chalk and cheese relations. Ironically Lydia is having motherly struggles of her own with daughter Astrid – Jenny Ortega who, like Ryder before her, manages to play the grumpy teenager in sympathetic fashion. And there is a very clever twist in terms of Astrid’s love interest, a charming young lad with old-fashioned interests.

Another twist in meta terms is the representation of original character Charles Deetz – in a reversal of the recent AI controversy of conjuring up actors who are deceased, the character is made dead to cover for the living actor, Jeffrey Jones. Rather than recast, eliminate a well-loved character or, as above, design an AI doppelganger, the filmmakers honour the character’s memory in true Beetlejuice style by wittily including him as a blood-spurting, headless ghost.

Minor complaints are that some parts were a tad underwritten and thrown in, such as Monica Bellucci as Beetlejuice’s ex, who is excellent in terms of spectacle but ultimately not a great deal more than a prop. A bit more Beetlejuice would have been nice, while Willem Defoe is disappointing and Justin Theroux doesn’t fully hit the mark. Overall though, a very enjoyable ride and respectful sequel.