The Pitch: It’s been decades since Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) had to contend with the ghost with the most known as Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), and in that time she’s become not just a mother to rebellious and snarky Astrid (Jenna Ortega), but now hosts a TV show about spooky sightings called Ghost House.
What of the original Ghost House, in the small town of Winter River? Well, the family still owns it, and when an unexpected death brings Lydia, Astrid, and Lydia’s stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) back, the Deetz clan has to confront both new ghost problems, as well as the old ones they left behind.
Say “Sequel” Three Times and It Appears: The best aspect of director Tim Burton taking on Beetlejuice 2, 36 years after the original, is that he and his cast clearly had a lot of fun with it. While the 1988 original was an appropriately gothic and occasionally spooky take on the afterlife — that exorcism sequence, with the rapid aging, is still unsettling today — Beetlejuice Beetlejuice plays much more like a straightforward comedy, lacking the same moody atmosphere that made the first film a Halloween classic.
This means that while this film has a much bigger body count than the first, that same lighter tone leads to those deaths feeling a little meaningless. In exchange, we get stuff like a big goofy performance from Willem Dafoe as a deceased TV actor known for police procedurals, who’s now in charge of investigating undead crimes. Does Dafoe’s work fit with the established tone of this universe? Not really. Is it reliably hilarious on its own merits? Absolutely.
Monica Bellucci plays the former Mrs. Beetlejuice, who’s now determined to hunt down her ex, while Justin Theroux also pushes into the realm of unhinged as Lydia’s fiancé/manager, who’s clearly someone to be wary of even before you see that he has a lil yuppie ponytail. (It remains wild that Theroux is simultaneously the same man who played the deranged DJ in Zoolander and also gave one of TV’s great nuanced performances in HBO’s The Leftovers. Here, he’s much more in Zoolander territory.)
All Together Ooky: While Burton’s surrounded by longtime collaborators like Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito for this movie, the project that has the bigger impact is the Netflix series Wednesday, which Burton directed and executive produced. Beyond Jenna Ortega being cast as Lydia’s daughter, the script was written by Wednesday showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar.
Gough and Millar are primarily TV guys (most notably, they were the executive producers of long-running WB favorite Smallville), which is one way of understanding why there’s almost an episodic structure to the narrative; the film features multiple adversaries and obstacles for its characters, each of which gets wrapped up before the characters move onto the next problem. It keeps the pacing pretty active; the catch is that by the time Beetlejuice Beetlejuice reaches its ostensible climax, it just feels like another plot point (versus the culmination of everything that’s come before.
As for Ortega, you can tell that the production team had a lot of conversations about how to make sure her character was recognizably the child of Lydia (who was goth before goth was really a thing), without feeling too much like Wednesday Addams sans the pigtails. It… almost works; Astrid is definitely a moody teenager who slings around Wednesday-esque insults when people tease her about her family’s ghostly connections. But she wears somewhat colorful clothes, at least.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Warner Bros.)
Some Things Change, Some Things Stay the Same: At this point, we’ve seen enough long-brewing sequels to films like Beetlejuice for certain tropes to emerge, like the requisite in-world explanations as to why certain cast members from the original film didn’t return. In the case of Jeffrey Jones, who played Lydia’s father and Delia’s husband, Jones is still alive but persona non grata in Hollywood thanks to his legal issues, so the film finds a way (admittedly a pretty amusing one) to keep him off screen.
As for the ghosts played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, their absence is handled in a much more offhand manner; some dialogue establishes that thanks to a “loophole,” the Maitlands were able to move on. Honestly, it’s a smart omission — their presence doesn’t feel necessary, with all the other plot machinations going on, and even when the person’s still alive, de-aging technology is starting to feel increasingly ghoulish. (And not in the good way.)
The Verdict: The original cast brings plenty of spark, with Ryder ably carrying the film’s emotional arc and Keaton glorying in getting to be this goofy. (We need more Keaton comedies, please and thank you.) And a number of big effects moments are executed in a charming, handmade way, because after all, the sandworms shouldn’t look real. This ain’t Denis Villeneuve’s Dune!
Perhaps the best way to explain how Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is different from the first film is by talking about the shrunken-head guys. Originally a sight gag in 1988, the sequel creates an entire squad of dudes whose antics add some broad comedy to the action; while they’re much bigger and weirder-looking, it’s hard not to draw a comparison to the Minions of the Despicable Me universe. And while Minions are fun to watch, they aren’t exactly scary… Much like the rest of this film. There’s nothing wrong with a comedy being a comedy, but look elsewhere for spooky vibes, this Halloween season.
Where to Watch: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will be loose in theaters starting Friday, September 6th. You can stream the original Beetlejuice on Max, or on VOD via Apple TV+ or Amazon.
Trailer: