BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE – Review by Nadine Whitney

The Juice is loose again, and a lot has happened since 1988. For one thing Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is a mother to her own seventeen-year-old, Astrid (Jenna Ortega) who is none too fond of Lydia’s “ghost seeing” palaver. Generally, Astrid is none too fond of the Deetz family except for Clive who has suffered the recent misfortune of being eaten by a shark while on a holiday bird watching. His untimely death brings Delia (Catherine O’Hara) and the estranged mother and daughter back to Winter River. Accompanied by Lydia’s cloying manager/boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux) ghosts from the past will resurface.

Not those ghosts – Barbara and Adam Maitland have been dispatched for expediency by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith’s script to make room for a lot of subplots – few of which are properly explored. Tim Burton, of course, brings back the titular demon Betelgeuse/Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) who has been running an office in the underworld with the help of some shrunken headed minions. Still carrying a torch for Lydia (and appearing in front of her when he can) Beetlejuice has a small/large problem on his hands when his ex-wife and soul sucker, Delores (Monica Bellucci) reconstitutes her severed parts and comes after him for revenge.

Lydia is far from the spunky young woman of the past. She’s depressed and anxious. She lost her husband and Astrid’s father Richard (Santiago Cabrera) while he was working on environmental research in the Amazon. Astrid feels her mother has neglected her by spending too much time on her “fake” career as a ghost medium. She doesn’t like Rory, and nor does Delia. Whatever Lydia does seems to disappoint someone – mostly herself.

The madness surrounding the Winter River house includes Delia covering it in a shroud, turning the funeral and grieving process into a piece of performance art, and Rory deciding to propose very publicly to Lydia. Astrid needs to escape and ends up crashing her bike into the fence of Jeremy’s (Arthur Conti) backyard. The handsome teen is reading Dostoyevsky and he and Astrid start a flirtation.

Meanwhile in the underworld Delores is on the loose sucking souls wherever she goes. She attracts the attention of television actor and now police captain of the underworld, Wolf Jackson (a hilarious Willem Dafoe). Wolf Jackson is keeping his eye on Beetlejuice who is keeping an eye out for an escape to the realm of the living and that marriage he missed out on over thirty years ago.

Tim Burton hits a lot of familiar beats in his much belated sequel to his classic 1988 film – the sandworm, people being possessed to sing and dance by Beetlejuice (this time to Richard Harris’ MacArthur Park), and some excellent stop motion miniature work. Delia is again a scene stealer – but this time with a lot more heart, and there is an Otho substitute. However, where Beetlejuice had a simple through line in terms of plot, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is overcrowded and throws all the seemingly set rules of the first film out the window whenever it wants to. There is simply too much plot. The Delores story allows for one clever gag but otherwise goes nowhere. Character motivations are telegraphed far too early and anything seeming like a twist is mild at most.

The focus on the three generations of Deetz women coming together and fighting for each other in the above and below worlds with some meddling from Beetlejuice would have been enough to sustain a colourful movie and give it emotional depth. Despite some decent comedic shenanigans – mostly coming from shrunken head Bob, Delia, and Wolf Jackson – the film is unbalanced.

Tim Burton’s visual work is also unbalanced. Technology has improved exponentially for VFX since 1988 and his mix of trying to recreate the feel of the original film with the sleeker contemporary look is often jarring.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice suffers from expectation exceeding what Burton can produce. Michael Keaton has lost none of his vigour as Beetlejuice, but the character is less interesting the second time around. Catherine O’Hara’s Delia is the scene stealer, especially when she proves herself to be far less self-involved than suspected.

In terms of long-gestating legacy sequels there have certainly been worse examples, and there have been far better. It’s one of Tim Burton’s more successful recent efforts. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has enough colour, flair, and humour to make it enjoyable, but it’s not a pinch on the original.