Within a few minutes of his first scene in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, it occurred to me that that eponymous character is probably the greatest role of Michael Keaton’s career. Obviously, it was a major touchstone for him in the 1980s, that directly landed him the gig of a lifetime as the first serious on-screen Batman, but Beetlejuice is a much more specific creature that plays to Keaton’s unique strengths of huckster charisma. He has never been allowed to be as playfully expressive or as singularly entertaining as with this wild and manic, sleazy con man poltergeist. And because of this, his coming home in the latest studio attempt at a cash-grab legacy-sequel ultimately feels more welcome. And as Beetlejuice is wont to do, that effect has a way of ever-so-slightly raising up the movie around it.
Of course, Tim Burton is more than happy to be back as well -his apparent motivation for returning to his original breakthrough hit likely wrapped up in the opportunity to expand on and showcase that freakish afterlife realm glimpsed a handful of times in the 1988 original. And while he does cater to the nostalgia-bait requirements of this genre of blockbuster (in some of the grating ways you’d expect), the level of creativity and macabre detail on display betrays a rush of enthusiasm and energy on his part not seen in at least a decade.
The plot picks up more than thirty years after the original film. Winona Ryder returns as Lydia Deetz, now a well-known medium with her own TV show, coming back to Winter River to mourn the death of her father, alongside Catherine O'Hara's stepmother Delia, and her own estranged daughter Astrid, played by Burton's latest muse, Jenna Ortega. Justin Theroux is also constantly around as Lydia's try-hard producer and boyfriend Rory. Meanwhile, the ghoulish afterlife is under the scourge of the 'soul-sucker' Delores (Monica Bellucci) in pursuit of her ex-husband Beetlejuice -who in an effort to escape her, sets his sights on Lydia once again.
As I implied, Keaton has lost no stride or spontaneity in his return to Beetlejuice, even as the character and the film on a whole is understandably less scrappy or edgy as a franchise property than as a standalone entity. The character is notably given more grounding too -a backstory for instance- as he is shifted into a protagonist role with his own storyline, though retaining his deceitful, mischievous streak. Sometimes, it is an odd fit for him -Beetlejuice being ensconced within a larger stratified society takes a little away from his unique charm as character; it’s dull to see Beetlejuice interviewed by an underworld cop for instance, even if that cop is a dead B-movie action star played by Willem Dafoe. There’s a degree to which the movie seeks to explain stuff better left alone -the mark of a nostalgia sequel. And yet in conjunction with this it finds fun and thematically consistent ways to illustrate its world.
Burton dives in again with great enthusiasm, bringing a welcome freshness and humour to his unique afterlife, where every ghost remains in the state they died in (we see Charles Deetz in several scenes -the upper half of his torso completely gone due to his demise at the hands of a shark), and everything is run by a cold and cantankerous bureaucracy -also, there’s a soul train which is delightfully exactly what you’d expect. What brings added colour to this dismally lit space is Burton’s insisted-upon practical effects. Everyone who populates the afterlife is either a real person in excellent make-up or some tangible piece of effects-work -such as Bob and all of Beetlejuice’s shrunken head minions. The deflated balloon bodies that Delores leaves behind are right in keeping with this aesthetic, as is one freaky and deftly deployed Gremlin of a thing symbolic of both Lydia's great fear and that of the audience. And of course being Tim Burton, there’s a fair amount of stop-motion animation, such as in Delia’s recounting of Charles’s death, and of course those striped desert worms that chase Lydia and Astrid as well as any counterpart from Dune could.
There’s a good pervasive sense of chaotic style to the movie as well -that particularly come to life in its use of music. The sequence where Delores literally rebuilds herself to the Bee Gees' “Tragedy” is a freaky highlight that is only really matched by Beetlejuice’s warped invocation of “MacArthur Park” as this movie’s answer to the famed “Day-O” bit from the original, only far more elaborate. Outside of the songs, Burton includes refreshing creative touches like illustrating Beetlejuice’s medieval backstory in expressionist lighting and entirely in Italian; or just the excitement with which he subverts what looks at the outset to be a very bland teen love story subplot for Astrid and a nice local boy Jeremy (Arthur Conti). The movie is just dotted by an assortment of weird choices that nicely gel with the movie’s overall attitude of embracing its weirdness, both for itself and its characters.
All this said, the movie is not without its familiar patterns and occasionally egregious nostalgia-bait trappings. Several of the same gags from the first movie make an appearance, such as the horrifying unseen thing Beetlejuice does with his face to scare mortals, and a slow low-key "Day-O" is reprised inappropriately and without explanation at Charles's funeral. There's a beat of reverence when Lydia uncovers the model town in the house's attic and then is of course shrunken down into it. And while the story takes some detours, it does lead to the exact same place as the first movie -with Beetlejuice trying to marry Lydia (in the same wedding dress no less). Much as this is a creative movie it is not an original movie by any stretch. Lydia's whole life for instance, with her degree of fame, popular spook-themed television show, and relationship with her daughter that directly mirrors her own youthful bitterness towards her parents, is patently uninspired. If not exactly the same details and general arc of other legacy sequels, certainly they are the most obvious ones to be given to this character. And they are played and resolved more or less exactly as would be expected, regardless of any spontaneity around them.
What's really unfortunate about that is that Ryder is otherwise quite good and notably enthusiastic to be back. While she can’t help but play some aspects, particularly the paranoia, as her character on Stranger Things, there is some distinct subtlety to her performance and a humour that at times betrays her own disbelief in her storyline. Ortega meanwhile slots comfortably into and brings life to what is otherwise a rather drab character on the page, and Theroux plays pretty well a mix of obvious disingenuousness and pathetic desperation in his character’s relationship with Lydia. And Dafoe and O’Hara are both hilarious. Unlike say, the recent Ghostbusters movies, nobody in the cast, either new or returning, seems at all disinterested in being there.
And I think it is the dual influence of both Keaton and a surprisingly invigorated Burton that facilitate this. Even in its worst moments, the passion is tangible, and it makes for a movie that though it doesn’t necessarily buck trends for this kind of soulless endeavour, feels free of a lot of banal interference in its character and artistry. It goes to some very bizarre places and gets away with things that a more conventional franchise movie (and especially a Beetlejuice project not helmed by Burton) wouldn’t. And that is a delight. While it caves to its share of predictable legacy sequel precepts, it’s a silly, spontaneous movie too. A little eccentricity goes a long way.
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