Movie Review: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Following his return as Batman in Andy Muschietti’s The Flash (2023), Michael Keaton again revisits another iconic character in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – a prospect apparently strong enough to lure director Tim Burton out of retirement to helm the project. Unfortunately, the result is slightly better than a rehash of the first film, but has nowhere near the original’s charm or appeal.
The film begins by re-introducing the audience to Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) who has been using her ability to commune with the dead as a means to earn an income. However, when a family tragedy occurs, the family must reconvene at the long abandoned home in Winter River to sort through the remnants of their lives. There, Lydia’s estranged daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), learns the truth of her mother’s story and the demon named Beetlejuice.
After last working together on Batman Returns (1992), director Tim Burton (who ostensibly retired from filmmaking after 2019’s Dumbo) and actor Michael Keaton revisit their first success together – 1988’s Beetlejuice. Arriving nearly thirty-six years after the original film was released and, given that the film lacks the innate charm of the first incarnation, one has to wonder why exactly the endeavor was undertaken in the first place.
There is a strong undercurrent of making the underworld much more macabre and intense than it was in the first film – perhaps that is meant to show that times are darker these days, or perhaps it was simply to up the rating to a PG-13. Regardless, the result is a film far less fun than its predecessor and one that plays more like a “this is how we wanted it to be the first time…if we hadn’t been shoehorned into a family-friendly rating” type of exercise – somehow completely missing the aesthetic that made the film so enduring. The first film had a distinctive voice and presence that is sadly absent here and is instead replaced with a “look at all this weird stuff” motif.
Michael Keaton in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” Photo by Parisa Taghizadeh. © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
As Beetlejuice, Keaton is again one of the more entertaining elements of the film. The film comes alive when he is onscreen, unfortunately, that isn’t all that often as the story does focus more on Ryder and Ortega’s mother/daughter entanglement. Comedically, and narratively, holding everything together though is Catherine O’Hara who effortlessly steps back into the role of Della Deetz and her production of ever-increasingly bizarre – yet somehow, less awful – art work. Ryder and Ortega do most of the heavy lifting throughout the film and they do a fine job, but, again, are saddled with traipsing through a script riddled with nods to the original that simply fall flat here, such as a forced sing-a-long of Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” à la Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song).”
While the return of all involved should be enough to make Beetlejuice Beetlejuice worth your time, there is ultimately a hollow center in the middle of this particular treat that would have benefited from something a bit more substantial than simply saying “here we go again.”
Mike Tyrkus
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