Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Loose Again

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Last summer Michael Keaton put on the Batman suit for the first time in 31 years. Did he kill it? Yes he did. Whether or not you liked The Flash, Keaton's Batman was a highlight of that movie. Now he's going even further, putting on the Beetlejuice makeup a full 36 years after the original movie. Does he still have it? Yes he does.

Keaton is 73, and there's a reason he's one of my favorite actors. He can be hilariously zany, but he's also able to tap into deep resources of hurt and rage. He can be aloof and cool, but he's charmingly human. (His second directorial effort, Knox Goes Away, is one of the most underrated movies of this year.) He jumps back into Beetlejuice with no shame.

What brings the "Juice" back after all this time? These days, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) uses her psychic powers to communicate with the dead for a popular TV show, produced by the slightly slimy Rory (Justin Theroux), her romantic partner and soon-to-be-fiance. She learns that her father has passed away. (In the original, he was played by Jeffrey Jones, now a registered sex offender; only his vague likeness is used here.)

Lydia contacts her mother, Delia (Catherine O'Hara), now a successful artist. Together they go to get Lydia's estranged daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), from college to bring her home from the funeral. Astrid is angry with her mother for not using her powers to speak to her late father, and, in general, for spending more time with dead people than with her own daughter.

Meanwhile, in the land of the dead, a janitor (Danny DeVito) inadvertently knocks over several boxes and frees the chopped-up pieces of Dolores (Monica Bellucci), who proceeds to staple herself back together. She's a kind of succubus, and Beetlejuice's ex-wife, and she's either looking to get him back, or looking for revenge.

As for Beetlejuice, he's somehow got his own netherworld office now, populated entirely by shrunken heads like Bob (Nick Kellington), who answer phones. (When we last left B.J., he was in the waiting room and had his own head shrunk.) He's been pining for Lydia this whole time, and now that Dolores is after him, marrying Lydia will be a perfect excuse to rebuff her advances.

Back in the real world, escaping her lunatic family, Astrid crashes her bike into a treehouse, and meets Jeremy (Arthur Conti), a lonely boy whom she seems to click with. He invites her back to spend Halloween with him. Without disclosing more plot, it all ends in a rescue attempt in the netherworld, with most of the characters running around like crazy, including the very funny Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), a dead actor who insisted on performing his own stunts, and now plays his signature cop character full-time. (A helpful secretary keeps bringing him paper cups of hot coffee.)

It's remarkable how long director Burton has been able to work in Hollywood and keep up his singular style. Of course, there are criticisms. Some accuse him of being juvenile, interested only in fantasy and not in real life, and others roll their eyes at him doing the "same thing" over and over again. But if we think about it in terms of a "Burton-verse," it's one that stretches across more than twenty films, which he has created from scratch, from his own imagination, and kept expanding and kept consistent for four decades.

If Hollywood is a place that chews people up, breaks them down, and spits them out, then Burton is an anomaly, both an outsider and an insider at the same time. Who else could have made two Beetlejuice movies so far apart that look and feel a part of the same fabric? Think of all those other decades-down-the-line sequels of other 1970s and 1980s movies (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Tron, Rocky, Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, Blade Runner, Coming to America, Mad Max, Ghostbusters, Bill & Ted, etc.), and consider how many of those have, or haven't, felt like consistent visions. (Only George Miller's Mad Max films match up.)

Which is not to say that, sadly, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is not without its flaws. With all due respect to Mr. Burton, who was lucky enough to marry the beautiful Monica Bellucci last year, her role here doesn't serve much purpose. Beetlejuice never needed another excuse to try to marry Lydia. Even so, Bellucci's "stapling" scene is cinematic gold, and she does look a lot like Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas.

But the third act is the slightly bigger problem. While the film is very funny throughout, there are a couple of big jokes as things ramp up to the climax that simply don't land. Without going into too much detail, they are jokes involving the old TV dance show Soul Train, and the insufferably horrible song "MacArthur Park," which, it must be reported, runs more than seven minutes when played in full. It's a joke, I get it, but these things put a drag on things, and take away the "snap" the film needed as it drew to a close.

Nevertheless, the film gets a recommendation from me, mainly because of its tone. It never for a second feels like something that was done just for the money. It genuinely feels like all these old friends and co-workers (almost the whole cast has worked with Burton at least once before, including Jenna Ortega in the series Wednesday) were all too glad to gather again for a little fun. And that fun comes across onscreen. And I'll say that three times.