Warner Bros. Pictures
Think about your favorite musical artist still rocking in their twilight years. Maybe it’s AC/DC or the Stones or Aerosmith. For example purposes, I’ll say mine is Paul McCartney. I liked his last record, 2020’s self-titled McCartney III. It’s got a great guitar ditty in ‘Long Tailed Winter Bird,’ a beautiful anthem in ‘Find My Way,’ and there’s a case to be made that it’s the best overall record out of his three eponymous offerings. But when I saw him in concert a year later, I didn’t want to hear any of the crap. I wanted ‘Get Back’ and ‘Let It Be’ and ‘Live and Let Die.’ Play the hits.
Why then do we ask for unbridled, lifelong creativity from our filmmakers? Tim Burton went on an unrivaled decade-plus run starting in the late ’80s, where he ripped off nothing but triple platinum records, from the original Beetlejuice to his two Batman films to Ed Scissorhands to Ed Wood to Ed Bloom. Just about everything on this side of the millennia has ranged from truly terrible to just fine and now, all these years later, he’s back to playing the hits in a sequel to the first movie that felt singularly Burtonian, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, now playing in theaters.
The only problem is, Betelgeuse was never the star of Beetlejuice. The house ghost with the most that’s become a pop culture icon through the animated series, Broadway musical, and Universal Studios photo-ops is eleventh-billed in the movie that shares his name. Then-comedian Michael Keaton gets the ceremonious ‘and Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice’ credit. The new film wants so badly to make him the star (Keaton is now billed above the title along with Burton) and while it really should, it just doesn’t — to its great disadvantage.
All these years later, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder, still forced to wear the same haircut her teenage character had in 1988) is now a well-known ghost-hunting television host. When her father Charles dies (played in the first film by since-convicted sex offender Jeffrey Jones, so yeah, he had to go), she and step-mother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) have to head back to the iconic house to mourn, purge, pack, and do all the things you do when somebody dies. On the way, they have to pick up her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) from college. She doesn’t believe in ghosts, is haunted by her mother’s fame, and finds her whole family dynamic to be a curse — thus the vicious cycle of teenage rebellion continues.
But wait, there’s more. Lydia’s producer/sorta-fiancee Rory (Justin Theroux, who has been completely unfunny for twenty years now, often confusing a short man-pony with actually having comedic chops) wants to use this emergency family-gathering to throw together a wedding. Oh! And don’t forget that Astrid, being a young adult, must need a potential suitor of some kind for, uh, plot reasons, so let’s introduce a charming (it’s a trap!) young man about halfway through the film before it’s too late to introduce any more characters.
And you can’t forget Betelgeuse. Sure, he’s still irreverent, but he can’t be irrelevant, so he’s given some business with an ex-wife of his (Monica Bellucci) who wants to kill him. Well, he’s already dead, so I guess she wants him double dead. She pops in from time to time so that ghost detective Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe) has something to investigate. Beetlejuice will be summoned in the end to wrap it all up.
Got it?
Warner Bros. Pictures
That’s a lot of plot, especially when the first film can be wrapped up pretty simply in a nice and neat logline: a recently dead young couple haunts their old house to scare off the new owners. I suppose this film’s one-sentence pitch was: it’s a sequel to Beetlejuice.
But when Burton does what he does so well, it works. He and Keaton make so much sense together and their silly, spirited collaboration feels like riding a bike. Keaton gets all the best bits and he milks every single one. (Most of the jokes are forgettable, but there’s a gag with a baby doll I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.) Ortega, after a Burton collaboration playing the title character in Wednesday, and DaFoe, a veteran of the Anderson and Lanthimos bizarro worlds, are natural and perfect fits for his brand. And there’s something so magical about hearing a Danny Elfman score while looking at a Tim Burton image.
Unfortunately, he does also seem to fall trap to many of his worst tendencies. The plot mechanics are borderline disastrous, a second thought to the time spent on the Caligari-inspired worlds and often uninspired fan service. (I’ll just get this out of the way: No, there’s no Alec Baldwin or Geena Davis cameos. In this Deadpool & Wolverine world we live in, you pretty much expect it. But I guess ghosts can’t exactly age, Baldwin is too controversial, and Geena Davis is too retired — with Blink Twice also in theaters, I’d consider playing the lottery if I had two big-screen Geena Davis-es at one time again.)
And aside from Keaton, DaFoe, and O’Hara doing their damnedest, it’s just not funny. If you thought Burton missed the mark trying to find the camp in a 1960s vampire melodrama with his Dark Shadows, just wait until he rips off … himself.
But, and it must be asked, is it just enough to hear the hits? Its crimes are found in just about every megasequel or Burton misfire and although it’s a mixed bag, it still feels more like his inspired work than his Disney remakes or his recent forgettable projects. Sure, the key has changed, the band’s lineup is a little different and a little older, and he insists on playing a song or two from that later-period record you never liked, but it’s still the same sound. It’s funky and macabre and fatalistic and ghoulish and creative. Isn’t that all we’ve really been asking of Tim Burton? It’s the small part I liked in his Dumbo remake, what I thought was sorely lacking in his Alice in Wonderland, and what made an Addams Family riff a perfect vehicle for him. If it feels close enough, is that good enough?
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has a run time of 1 hour 44 minutes, and is rated PG-13 for violent content, macabre and bloody images, strong language, some suggestive material and brief drug use.
Warner Bros. Pictures
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