Beetle­juice Beetle­juice review – squelchy, stripy sequel fun

The lega­cy sequel has become hot prop­er­ty in Hol­ly­wood, with every stu­dio dig­ging the depths of their archive for prop­er­ties ripe for res­ur­rec­tion – it’s free real estate! But when it comes to the cin­e­mat­ic after­life, at least bring­ing Beetle­juice back from the grave makes nar­ra­tive sense. Tim Burton’s ​“Ghost With The Most” cap­tured the hearts of count­less teen goths and cement­ed Winona Ryder’s sta­tus as a Gen X icon, as well as send­ing sales for striped suits into the stratos­phere. In fact, a sequel was green­lit back in 1990 but has tak­en 34 years to mate­ri­alise, with var­i­ous scrapped plans includ­ing a script for Beetle­juice Goes Hawai­ian by Jonathan Gems (who would lat­er work with Bur­ton on Mars Attacks!).

In the end, Bur­ton decid­ed to stick clos­er to home when Warn­er Broth­ers final­ly ponied up for a sequel. With orig­i­nal stars Ryder and Cather­ine O’Hara repris­ing their roles as Lydia and Delia Deetz – plus Michael Keaton as the both­er­some bio-exor­cist – Beetle­juice Beetle­juice sees Jen­na Orte­ga join the fam­i­ly as Lydia’s daugh­ter Astrid, who has a tem­pes­tu­ous rela­tion­ship with her TV medi­um moth­er in a man­ner that mir­rors the mater­nal dynam­ic from the first film. Fol­low­ing the death of her father Charles dur­ing a bird­watch­ing expe­di­tion, Lydia reunites with her daugh­ter and step­moth­er for a fam­i­ly funer­al, upend­ed when her skeevy boyfriend/​manager Rory (Justin Ther­oux) pro­pos­es a Hal­loween wed­ding. Mean­while, in the after­life, Beetle­juice is avoid­ing a fam­i­ly reunion of his own as his mur­der­ous ex-wife Delores (Mon­i­ca Bel­lu­ci) quite lit­er­al­ly pieces her­self back togeth­er and swears revenge, with B‑Movie actor turned ghost­ly gumshoe Wolf Jack­son (Willem Dafoe) hot on her case.

It’s a sequel that refresh­ing­ly doesn’t lack ideas, in fact suf­fer­ing a lit­tle from an excess of them, with three vil­lains pop­ping up in a fair­ly com­pact 100-minute run­time. Despite being set up as the film’s Big Bad, Delores dis­ap­pears for half the film with­out expla­na­tion – which may be a bless­ing con­sid­er­ing Bellucci’s act­ing tal­ents – as a sec­ondary vil­lain is estab­lished, while Beetle­juice him­self schemes to reunite with his one-time bride-to-be Lydia. All the while there’s gross-out humour, cre­ative­ly staged corpses and shrunk­en heads aplen­ty, harken­ing to the gothy zani­ness that was, at the height of his career, Burton’s trademark.

Hav­ing enjoyed some­thing of a renais­sance since his work on the Net­flix series Wednes­day (which is where he ini­tial­ly met Orte­ga) this is Burton’s first film in five years, since the dis­ap­point­ing Dis­ney ​“live-action” Dum­bo – which even Keaton con­cedes he was bad in – and com­fort­ably his best work since 2012’s Franken­wee­nie (and his best live-action work since 2007’s Sweeney Todd).

Reunit­ing with many of his reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tors includ­ing cos­tume design­er Colleen Atwood and pro­duc­tion design­er Mark Scru­ton as well as – of course – Dan­ny Elf­man, Bur­ton works hard to con­jure up some of the macabre mag­ic which made the orig­i­nal film a cult clas­sic, pay­ing homage but – for the most part – avoid­ing rep­e­ti­tion. Keaton is clear­ly hav­ing a ball repris­ing one of his most well-known roles, and Ryder tran­si­tions Lydia Deetz into a world-weary, well-mean­ing par­ent with charm as Cather­ine O’Hara con­tin­ues to be a joy in every­thing she does. Orte­ga fits into the Deetz fam­i­ly with­out mere­ly imper­son­at­ing Ryder’s orig­i­nal icon­ic per­for­mance, but Dafoe gets the best of the script with his preen­ing, hyper-com­mit­ted actor miss­ing half his skull fol­low­ing an unfor­tu­nate on-set acci­dent. Justin Ther­oux is an unex­pect­ed high­light too even as a char­ac­ter lack­ing orig­i­nal­i­ty (there’s some decid­ed­ly cringy boomer humour in Alfred Gough and Miles Millar’s script).

Even with the inevitable sheen of a big-mon­ey stu­dio sequel Bur­ton has an endur­ing affec­tion for prac­ti­cal effects, and although there’s obvi­ous use of CGI, this doesn’t feel over­ly obvi­ous or dis­tract­ing, aid­ed by the film’s moody cin­e­matog­ra­phy and elab­o­rate set design which helps to cre­ate a sense of cohe­sion. It’s obvi­ous that Bur­ton in him­self has become a strange sort of ®IP, but con­sid­er­ing the extent to which low-effort cash-grab sequels con­tin­ue to plague the box office, it’s refresh­ing to watch one that is so enter­tain­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en that Burton’s career had been at a cre­ative nadir for some years (“We agreed ​‘No Dis­ney’” one char­ac­ter says in a line that feels more than a lit­tle point­ed) before he regained some of his spir­it with Wednesday.

Although Beetle­juice Beetle­juice suf­fers a lit­tle from an over­abun­dance of ideas lead­ing to a bit of a third-act scram­ble, and its plot points are sign-post­ed so large you can see them a mile away, it’s a much bet­ter-exe­cut­ed and enjoy­able film than it has any right to be, charm­ing­ly rev­er­ent and ref­er­en­tial to the point that even its cliché sto­ry beats can be most­ly excused, undoubt­ed­ly down to the game atti­tudes of its cast and crew. If Bur­ton can just bring such enthu­si­asm to a new pet project, we might be back in business.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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