Let the Dead Rest — Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

The 1980s were an interesting time for movies. Advances in visual effects allowed for new avenues in storytelling to be explored. Studios weren’t afraid to give younger audiences a bit of a scare. The advent of the PG-13 rating by the MPAA helped to set a middle ground between PG and R, telling audiences that there are things that parents can still judge for themselves on a more age-appropriate scale. All of this was done with the understanding that artists could still take risks, still experiment, still test the limits of the viewers’ sensibilities.

There was perhaps no better example of how this new order could be done correctly than 1988’s Beetlejuice. A dark comedy with high elements of slapstick that blended horror and humor, the film employed stop-motion animation, rudimentary digital effects, expert puppetry and makeup, and utterly bonkers production design to create a story that was surreal, hilarious, and strangely relatable. The protagonists were young ghosts looking to drive interlopers out of their home and a suicidal teenager. The antagonists were out of touch yuppies and self-important artistic poseurs along with the playfully malevolent demon. The overarching moral was surprisingly about how important it is to coexist, to live peacefully with one another and enjoy life, even when you’re dead. And most importantly, it came out in an era where PG-13 existed, but PG still actually meant that the “guidance” was the responsibility of the “parents,” so overtly sexual jokes, grotesque visuals, and the exclamation of “Nice fuckin’ model!” were completely fine, practically normal, even.

Over 35 years later, the auteur behind that masterpiece, Tim Burton, follows it up with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. It was strange news when the film was announced, because the original is so beloved, but also self-contained. There was no outcry for a second installment, but given Burton’s creativity, there was certainly intrigue. If nothing else, there was likely to be some trepidation because Burton has been on a bit of a losing streak in recent years, with 2012’s Frankenweenie being his last project to gain “Certified Fresh” status on Rotten Tomatoes (though 2014’s Big Eyes came close), and coming off the horrendous Dumbo remake. Could he regain his mojo by going back to one of his most famous wells, or would this be another nail in his artistic coffin?

From where I sit after watching this sequel, the answer is… both. The movie is entertaining enough on its own, but you can’t argue that it isn’t wholly unnecessary. Further, while there are some solid flashes of Burton’s brilliance on display, the overall story and character dynamics scan as remarkably and dispiritingly safe and corporate, and that’s before we get to the soul-crushing commercial tie-ins with Carmax and Progressive Insurance. This combines to give us a film that doesn’t leave the audience wanting more, per se, but wondering why we didn’t get the best version of what this easily could have been.

The first example of what I’m talking about comes in the very first scene, where a recreation of the original’s opening of Winter River is “enhanced” by storm effects, and eventually pans out to a television studio, where Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder, still making all us 80s kids swoon) hosts a Ghost Hunters-esque chat show where she explores supposedly haunted houses and interviews the owners. This is a tremendous concept. Just like Hook begged the question of what would happen if Peter Pan grew up, here we posit what might happen if everyone’s first goth crush “sold out and got famous,” as she puts it later. Are these real hauntings? Is it all an elaborate production? Has she stopped believing that she can see ghosts? Is there an opportunity for commentary on the actual fraudsters who continue making these shows? The possibilities are almost endless.

Instead, the idea is abandoned almost as quickly as it’s introduced. The scenario only exists to establish that Lydia is now an adult — as if the 35-year gap wouldn’t get that across — and that her producer/boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux) is a controlling piece of shit and a low-rent Otho. For a brief moment Lydia sees a vision of our titular prankster (Michael Keaton, returning with full gusto) in her audience, which induces a panic attack, but again, it basically doesn’t matter, as we’re only here to get to the real inciting incident of the plot — the death of her father Charles (Jeffrey Jones is NOT back, for good reason; Google him if you feel the need to know why). This requires Lydia, step-mother Delia (Catherine O’Hara stealing every scene she’s in), and Lydia’s semi-estranged daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) to reunite and return to the house in Winter River for the funeral.

Meanwhile, in what I guess I’ll call the Neitherworld even though that was just for the cartoon, two dastardly developments are afoot. The first is that Betelgeuse is still stalking Lydia, somehow pining for the marriage that he didn’t make official to return to the land of the living three decades ago. The second is that a “soul-sucker” by the name of Delores (Monica Bellucci) literally reassembles her dismembered body parts after being freed from several containers, and goes on the hunt for the “Ghost with the Most,” prompting an investigation and police action from a dead actor-turned-detective named Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe).

All of these situations offer tons of potential for comedy and story, and sadly, almost all of it is left hanging. How did Delia actually become a renowned artist? We don’t know. Why was Delores being stored in boxes in a warehouse? No answer. How does soul-sucking work, and why aren’t there others who can do it? Don’t care. How did Betelgeuse get from the Waiting Room to running a thriving exorcism business with several Shrunken Head employees (led by Nick Kellington as Bob)? Doesn’t matter, but we do get a superfluous backstory about how Betelgeuse originally died, so I guess that’s something? When we learn of Charles’ death, Delia has to cancel a performance piece, leading the collaborating artist to storm out of the gallery and die in an appropriately silly fashion, arriving in the Waiting Room confused due to a language barrier. Do we follow him for any further shenanigans? Nope. He’s just there to clumsily spotlight a Danny DeVito cameo and eventually reveal Delores.

We basically only get three questions answered by this first act, one funny, the other two awful. On the plus side, the circumstances surrounding Charles’ death are some of the best dark jokes I’ve seen in a while, and the way he’s handled throughout the film is inspired. On the minus side, we get a one-line hand-wave as to why Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis don’t return as Adam and Barbara Maitland despite going back to their house; and the reason for Lydia and Astrid’s frosty relationship is sadly exactly what you’d expect: she’s just a moody teen who blames her mom for sucking, has no flaws of her own because that would somehow be anti-feminist, and abandons any sense of character development when she meets a cute boy (Arthur Conti as Jeremy).

Let’s stick with that last part for a second. Jenna Ortega is horrible in this movie. She’s a really good actress, but Burton and the script give her absolutely nothing to work with. She’s basically just there so the audience can say, “Oh yeah, I remember Wednesday. Let’s go watch that when we get home.” Her introduction takes place at her boarding school (meant to resemble Miss Shannon’s School for Girls before they actually go back to Connecticut), where she’s “bullied” by having a cheap Halloween decoration drop down in her dorm room when she opens the door because her mom is “weird.” Her comeback to the snickering mean girls? “When you’re on your second divorce with three kids, we’ll see who has the last laugh.” Was that supposed to be a joke? A triumphant statement? Anything other than a line delivered from a block of wood? What the hell was that? Astrid then gets several calls from Lydia about her grandfather, where she’s listed as “Alleged Mother” in her phone contacts. Ooh, angsty. So edgy. And of course, as it turns out, all of this sneering is because her father and Lydia’s ex-husband Richard (Santiago Cabrera) died when she was younger, and neither she nor Lydia can see his ghost. Despite Lydia doing everything she can to comfort her daughter, it’s just dismissed because Astrid can’t have the exact thing she wants.

Are you serious? In this one character, we basically have every tired and negative trope from every Disney remake and terrible Young Adult adaptation of the last 15 years, and for no reason other than to get her from the Maitland House to Jeremy so we can engage in even more clichés. Astrid isn’t even really a character, just a series of studio notes made flesh. She has no agency, no individuality, no personality other than a penchant for nontraditional Halloween costumes. All of her problems can be reduced to shoehorned generational trauma that we don’t see, and every line of dialogue can be replaced with a five-year-old sticking their tongue out.

Contrast this with Lydia in the original. We didn’t get much establishment as to why she was the way she was, mostly because we didn’t need it. The costume design and color aesthetic did a lot of the heavy lifting so we didn’t have to rely on exposition. Sure she resented Delia, as many teens do to a step-parent, but she didn’t blame every problem she had on Delia’s existence. They were just two different people. Delia was a flamboyant aspiring artist and socialite, while Lydia was an introverted emo girl. They still had a somewhat cordial relationship, and Lydia’s connection to Charles was decidedly normal. They didn’t see eye to eye on everything, but it was clear the characters loved one another. And yet, Lydia had suicidal tendencies. She didn’t form a rapport with Adam and Barbara because they were the parents she always wanted. She literally wanted to “be dead” like them so she could experience a weird existence that felt right for her. That’s fucked up, but in a way that feels realistic and can be properly explored, where balance can be found, and where we can still have fun in a life-affirming way that doesn’t diminish or dismiss her worldview.

There’s a reason why Astrid can’t see ghosts (until she can, of course). It’s not because Lydia is a fraud, or because Richard can’t or won’t haunt them, or any number of unrealized funny possibilities. The rules that Burton himself set in this universe answer the question. When Lydia first sees Adam and Barbara, it’s a shock, because she’s the only one who can. After reading the Handbook for the Recently Deceased, she explains the situation in one of the film’s best lines: “Living people often ignore the strange and unusual. I, myself, am strange and unusual.” That forms an instant connection and plausibility for the madcap antics we’re seeing on the screen. Conversely, Astrid is almost aggressively ordinary, both in appearance and behavior. She’s a stock 2010s-2020s teenage girl trope, nothing more.

I also think there’s a subtle perception difference when it comes to these two, mostly because when the original was released, Winona Ryder actually was a teenager. She was 16 when Beetlejuice came out, and it was her breakout role, having only accumulated a couple of credits beforehand. Jenna Ortega will be 22 in a couple of weeks, and while that’s not a huge age gap, it is noticeable, especially because Ortega has been a working actress for more than a decade. We’ve watched her grow up on TV and in the cinema. We know she’s experienced. Where in the first movie Ryder looked like a real teen girl you might meet on the street, Ortega just looks like an actress reading bad lines and pretending to be one. Because of that, when she gets on a bicycle that crashes through a fence and into a tree with no damage (Pee-wee’s bike had an easier time of it) to eventually meet and mope with Jeremy, I just roll my eyes because the moment we see that clearly Burton-esque tree, we know exactly what’s going on and where it’s heading.

Okay, let’s get to some good stuff, because I don’t want to just moan for the duration of this review. First off, most of the performances are spectacular. Ortega, Theroux, and Conti leave you wanting, but everyone else is there to pick up the slack and then some. Monica Bellucci’s character is mostly a prop and a plot device, but she sells every moment. Willem Dafoe is a batshit delight, as if you distilled his most manic characters down to their basic crazy essence, and he plays it to the hilt, complete with a fantastic running gag where he has a secretary bring him a cup of coffee in every scene no matter what he’s doing. Catherine O’Hara reminds everyone why she’s been one of the greatest forces in comedy for decades, eliciting pretty much every natural laugh this movie gets outside of the title character. Burn Gorman has a small role as the town minister (oh yeah, in one of the many irrelevant plot lines, Rory goads Lydia into a quickie wedding at Charles’ funeral so that we can set up yet another marriage climax) that’s just on the funny side of creepy.

And of course, there’s Keaton himself. The man hasn’t lost a stride as Betelgeuse (though the character loses several organs), imbuing every scene with an energy that only he can provide. We’re talking about a “trickster demon,” as Lydia puts it, and yet his off-the-wall comic timing still somehow makes him come off as almost charming despite being utterly disgusting. There were moments where it honestly felt like he and Lydia might even become friends like in the animated series. There’s an undeniable chemistry between Keaton and Ryder that borders on rapport, and you can tell both of them are having the time of their lives revisiting these characters. The harebrained schemes to both “win” Lydia and escape Delores only work because of Keaton’s delivery.

As for the production values, they’re quite solid. The production design and costuming are as strong as ever, with Burton and his team coming up with even more hilariously dark and disturbing depictions of how people died. Despite the rich veins for story and humor that are abandoned, the ones he engages with — like Charles’ fate — are really well executed. The absurdity of certain moments reminds us fondly of what he accomplished back in 1988, to the point that the more perfunctory callbacks seem even lamer by comparison.

This could have been a great follow-up, the rare legacy sequel that actually justifies its existence like Top Gun: Maverick. I just wish it had the figurative guts to take more chances and go in more unorthodox directions to match the literal ones that spill from Betelgeuse’s torso. It’s kind of amazing how much this movie plays it safe. The idea of a good haunt is replaced by the Burton equivalent of a Scooby-Doo mystery. Convenient lines of expository dialogue end up being a deus ex machina for nearly every situation (Astrid herself comments on this, which only makes it worse because it means the writers and Burton are fully aware of it). The lewd humor and dark jokes about suicide are left off in favor of gags like a “soul train” that only begs the question of how it would have worked before the TV show existed. In a moment that makes us yearn for that bygone era when PG and PG-13 had meaning, Betelgeuse says the word “fucko” late in the film at full volume, but a few scenes later, when he says, “What the fuck?” the swear is bleeped, because we dare not attempt to run afoul of the MPAA and their “One Fuck Rule” with PG-13. I wanted to kick over a fake tree in disgust when I heard that beep.

But really, the biggest sin this film commits is in just how predictable it all is. Maybe I’ve watched too many movies in my life. Maybe I’m on some sort of spectrum where this just bugs me more than anyone else. I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that nearly every plot and character beat is telegraphed, and it’s in no way fun. As soon as you hear “MacArthur Park” during the opening credits, you already know what song they’re going to use to try to one-up the “Day-O” scene, for example. The moment Astrid meets Jeremy, you know exactly how their relationship will play out, and if you somehow don’t, there will be myriad ways for the story to beat you over the head with it. When Delia makes a rather dubious purchase as part of her grieving process, you already know the punchline.

The reason Beetlejuice is such a classic is because you couldn’t predict anything. Unless you were somehow spoiled, there was no way of knowing that the “Day-O” scene would happen. The only clues you got — if you can even call them clues — are the other Harry Belafonte songs playing in the background earlier in the film. Even in the scene before it happens, Adam just says he’s got an idea. In this version, he’d literally spell the entire plan out, but back then Burton just let the audience be shocked by the hilarity and randomness of it all. There are no surprises here, and while the final product is competently made and even enjoyable at times, that’s just not acceptable from someone like Tim Burton. We come to him for a cinematic acid trip, and instead he gave us a placebo. As such, it’s good enough that we can sit back and enjoy the laughs here and there, but ultimately, in a movie that’s supposed to examine the endless possibilities of life and death, we’re left with something almost entirely soulless.

Grade: C+

Join the conversation in the comments below! What film should I review next? Do we need a law against legacy sequels? What fun is there in dressing up like Marie Curie for Halloween if you have to keep explaining the costume? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) and subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!

Originally published at http://actuallypaid.com on September 10, 2024.