REVIEW: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

Movie Reviews

You can let go of your understandable trepidation; Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is easily one of the best legacy sequels ever made, a fun and endlessly inventive return to Tim Burton’s macabre world huskily breathing underneath quaint small-town America. More than the usual cash grab and anything but a deconstruction, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice exists for a reason, and it’s satisfying to reexamine the characters thirty-five years later and see how new inductees to the ghost world come to terms with the afterlife and its many horrors.

After learning of her father’s death, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) returns to Winter River, Connecticut,  with her stepmother, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), and her resentful daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), for the funeral. But Lydia’s been having visions of the demonic ghost who once plagued her family, and when they return to the haunted house where Lydia spent her teen years, the supernatural pounds at the doors of our world to be let loose again. Meanwhile, in the afterlife, a dismembered woman named Delores (Monica Bellucci) staples herself back together and sets out to find the Ghost with the Most, stealing every soul that gets in her way.

I’m dancing around a lot of details because Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a movie you’ll want to discover for yourself. When it picks up with Lydia in the current year, she’s got the perfect job, one that makes sense for her on a character level and a human one. (Small hint: she makes use of the fact that she is, herself, strange and unusual.) Lydia is handled perfectly, and a lot of that is due to Winona Ryder’s terrific, nuanced performance. She’s recognizably Lydia from Beetlejuice – she’s still smart, and she’s still got her goth style – but she feels like she’s older now, having grown out of some of the more childish things she did last time. She isn’t running around taking pictures to piss people off, for example, and she talks more like a normal person now that she’s established herself as an adult. It’s a tough balance, one that could easily spill too far in either direction and ruin the character, but Ryder is excellent. This is absolutely Lydia Deetz, just a mature one who’s lived through more than she counted on as a teen.

Lydia is the lead of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which is as it should be, especially since Adam and Barbara aren’t around anymore. (Their absence is explained in a throwaway line, and while I suppose it’s kind of weak, it’s a necessary evil because Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are pushing 70 and can’t play two ghosts who died in their 30s.) Her daughter, Astrid, is sort of a secondary protagonist, and Jenna Ortega fits into this world as well as you’d expect. She’s a good actress who, along with the script, helps keep Astrid from becoming the annoying brat she would have in lesser hands. Astrid is a pivotal character in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice because her resentment of her mother extends to a belief in the supernatural. This is the danger in a sequel to a movie like Beetlejuice; we already know about this world, with Adam, Barbara, and Lydia being our surrogates in the first film, guided through the afterlife and all its trappings by those who’ve been dead a while. For this go-round, we’re experts, as is Lydia. That’s where Astrid comes in; she’s a novice almost by choice, and this time, we’re on the other side, knowing she should listen to her mother and waiting for her to discover the secrets of the ghost realm. How that happens is genuinely surprising, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice successfully pulls the rug out from under you a few times.

The rest of the cast is terrific as well. I wasn’t sure how big a part Catherine O’Hara would have, but she’s in about as much of this one as she was in Beetlejuice, or maybe a tiny bit less. Delia is just as vapid, snippy, and artsy as she was then, with the extra wrinkle that she and Lydia now have more in common than Lydia would like to admit. O’Hara is as funny as ever, and Delia remains a delight whenever she’s on screen. Justin Theroux plays Rory, Lydia’s work associate and boyfriend, and he’s basically the schmuck, the guy you hate just for his presence. I feel bad for actors who play these thankless roles because their job is to be unlikable, and Theroux is obnoxious and off-putting, which is perfect for Rory. Monica Bellucci’s Dolores is a force of nature, jackhammering her way through Beetlejuice Beetlejuice with little more than her screen presence to fuel her, and it’s more than enough. While Dolores is part of the film’s biggest problem, it’s certainly not because of Bellucci. And Willem Dafoe once again proves he’s one of the best actors out there, managing to create an entirely new character, one you wouldn’t expect of him but, once the credits roll, couldn’t imagine anyone else playing.

I’m missing someone, of course. If you’ve been waiting for me to get to him, that’s how you’ll feel when watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and I mean that in a good way. Betelgeuse has a bigger part in this one than he did in Beetlejuice – I think, anyway – but his appearances are spaced out and very deliberately executed, so it’s a surprise when he pops up. But Betelgeuse serves the same function here as he did in 1988; he’s the X factor, the embodiment of the trickster god archetype who foments chaos wherever he goes. The movie’s setup is so effective that Belegeuse’s presence is felt even when he’s not there, and the anticipation for his next appearance builds each time. Michael Keaton is brilliant again, embodying the troublemaking bio-exorcist as if he shot this film right after the first. He’s funny, he’s scary, and he has a Faustian bargain to offer on any occasion. When this is over, you’d gladly sit through a third Beetlejuice immediately because Keaton will leave you thirsty for more of his antics.

If there’s a drawback to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, it’s that it’s a little too much. The plot is more complex this time, with several subplots converging on each other, and they don’t all get the time they need to be entirely effective. The biggest loser, in this case, is Dolores, who disappears for a while and emerges again like a shark; it helps make her an intimidating presence, but her character is built up to be a lot more central than she ultimately is. It’s a shame, especially because of how good Monica Bellucci is. However, the other storylines are intricately plotted, with what seem almost like diversions suddenly becoming major arcs for the main characters. This is all wrapped in plenty of spectacle, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice never fails to deliver something new rather than using familiar trappings like crutches the way most legacy sequels do. (There’s a great joke about this at one point.) There are almost no repeated lines from the original Beetlejuice, which is a relief after something like Alien: Romulus. And when something from Beetlejuice makes an appearance or gets a callback, it’s for a purpose beyond being a ‘member berry.

That leaves plenty of room for new set pieces and ideas, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is full of them. There are song and dance numbers that feature new music and happen for new reasons (and all of the songs are perfectly chosen), and new facets to the afterlife that get explored while old ones that have been exhausted are left behind. One of the many joys of Beetlejuice was looking at the ghosts and using the clues in their wacky designs to figure out how they died, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice recaptures that sense of ingenuity. The special effects are much more minimalist than most of what you see today, with CGI present but used sparingly. The result is a return to a world that feels familiar as opposed to a lifeless update with new technology that kills all the charm of something we once knew. There are some truly inventive sequences and special effects throughout Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and it’s immensely gratifying to know that Tim Burton still has it in him to create this much wonder.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that rare modern movie that has the same magic as the films we grew up watching. You’re not just killing time with another empty spectacle that forgot the spectacle; you’re drawn into a world that feels real the entire time, with the comfort of the familiar and the thrill of something new. It’s impressive that Tim Burton was able to pull this off so well, and his latest film should serve as a master class in bringing back a rightfully dead property. But, then, raising the dead is what Beetlejuice did best.