In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the long-delayed sequel to Tim Burton’s 1988 supernatural comedy, you feel the tension between Burton the analog wizard of animation, Claymation, and elaborate set design who began his career with Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) and cemented it with Batman (1989) and Burton the postmodern maestro of Disney-produced digital hijinks who has wrangled 1’s and 0’s into elaborate reimaginings of Planet of the Apes, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Dumbo. Burton has never fully ceded his status as oddball auteur extraordinaire, although it has been ages since he made a film as fully committed to the eccentric outsider as Edward Scissorhands (1991) or Ed Wood (1994) (the closest he has come is his delightful and moving 2012 stop-motion-animated Frankenweenie).

Which is precisely what makes Beetlejuice Beetlejuice such an intriguing and, to some degree, disappointing experiment. The original Beetlejuice was a bizarro horror-comedy about a straight-laced couple who wind up dead and have to learn to navigate the strange, inefficient bureaucracy of the afterlife while fending off the mischievous titular demon-prankster and protecting the strange new family that has moved into their beloved home. Like Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, it was a love letter to physical comedy, practical effects, and the sheer delight of weirdness for its own sake. There were make-up and stop-motion effects galore, all of which was just hammy and silly enough to not feel really scary, even when it involved missing heads or separated torsos.

Now, 36 years later, Burton has brought back many of the characters from Beetlejuice, and he is clearly endeavoring to maintain the same tone of carnivalesque horror-humor, but there is something about the new film that feels too modern, too digital, and too overdone. Burton has always reveled in aesthetic overload, but in the original film it was offset with the homemade feel of the effects—all rubber and clay and foam. In the sequel, Burton can push the look further with digital effects, but it robs much of the film’s aesthetic of its charm. It is clear that Burton has relied to some degree on old-fashioned make-up effects and puppets and sleight of hand, but a lot of it feels imported out of a Marvel movie (or a CGI update of a Disney animated classic). It isn’t bad in and of itself, but it doesn’t feel right for the material.

The screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (co-creators of the Burton-produced Addams Family spin-off series Wednesday) returns as many of the original characters as possible, namely Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), who was a disaffected Goth teen back in the late ’80s who resented her pretentious, wanna-be artiste stepmother Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara) and is now the host of a popular television series that makes use of her ability to commune with the dead. Lydia now has her own disaffected teen daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega, the titular star of Wednesday), who resents her mom’s supernatural celebrity status. Alas, Lydia’s father, Charles, who was played in the original by Jeffrey Jones (now a convicted sex offender), has not fared so well, having been chomped by a shark following a plane crash in the South Pacific that is amusingly depicted with Claymation (we later see him in the afterlife with most of the top part of his body missing), and it is his death that brings the family back together at their family home atop a hill overlooking the small town of Winter River, Connecticut. Along for the ride is Rory (Justin Theroux), Lydia’s obnoxious and attention-craving boyfriend and producer, while Astrid strikes up a potential romance with Jeremy (Arthur Conti), a local teen who shares her love of Dostoevsky and sarcasm.

Meanwhile, in the afterlife, Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) is still skulking about, although he has his own issues in dealing the reemergence of his wife, Delores (Monica Bellucci), a wicked soul-sucker who poisoned him back in the 18th century (now we know how he died!), although he was able to chop her up with an axe before he expired. Having literally reassembled herself with willpower and staples, Delores is charging through the afterlife, sucking the souls out of various ghosts (including a janitor played by Danny DeVito) while being pursued by Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), who was an actor before he died and is now a police detective who goes about his work like he is starring in a hackneyed action movie. His overcommitment to the role is one the film’s primary pleasures, as is Bob (Nick Kellington), Beetlejuice’s shrunken-head minion who gets immense comic mileage out of his bulging eyes and nervous-quivering demeanor.

All of these plot threads eventually intersect, and it is a good thing because for its first half Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels like it is running in a half dozen different directions. Keaton proves that he can still conjure the kind of manic verbal and physical humor that defined his early acting career, and Catherine O’Hara maintains Delia’s absurd pretension while adding an element of humanity. Winona Ryder has the unfortunate role of straight woman, spending most of the movie reacting with incredulity at everyone around her, including Theroux’s Rory, who is delightfully scummy in his constant angling for his own betterment. At times Beetlejuice Beetlejuice sparks with the old magic, and it has a few memorable scenes and fun homages to the original, but it can’t ever really fully justify its own existence, especially when those digital effects intrude, reminding us of just how much time has passed.

Copyright © 2024 James Kendrick

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