After decades in development Hell, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice finally clawed its way out, primarily thanks to the director’s work on Wednesday, a show that was very much an homage to Burton’s heyday, who also directed the first four episodes. It was this reconnection with the pop culture zeitgeist and its star Ortega’s co-sign that no doubt bailed him out of director jail, to get this film made in a last ditch effort to regain the relevancy he once enjoyed. Over the years there’s been rumors of Beetlejuice going to Hawaii and a few other equally outlandish concepts that felt more like episodes of the underrated Saturday morning cartoon rather than theatrical outings, instead this feels like its cribbing from Ghostbusters Afterlife, in more ways than one. For me the film tries too hard to “do the thing!” and coast on nostalgia only to forget the underlying humanity of the original of a young woman neglected by her own parents, who discovers a new family with a pair of ghosts.
Picking up in present day 36 years after the original film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has the patriarch of the Deetz family passing away after a tragic shark attack. This was both a creative way to dispose of the character played by now convicted pedophile Jefferey Duncan, and a rather mundanely predictable narrative device to get everyone back in the house in Winter River, where the original film occurred for a funeral. With a line of dialogue, the Maitlands, the original charming ghost couple of the original film are written off as we now focus on Lydia Deetz. Who’s now a successful, albeit troubled television spiritual medium trying to wrangle a strong willed daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega) that also inherited her mother’s interest in all things strange and unusual. Lydia was not only struggling with the death of her husband, but now her father and the unresolved trauma of almost marrying a demon as a child. With the family back in the house, this gives Beetlejuice his chance back into the picture, as his long lost wife Dolores pulls herself together just in time to be the underutilized antagonist.
To say there’s a lot going on in this film would be the understatement of the century. The film feels less like a traditional three act narrative, and more like after being presented with a stack of 20 scripts and asked which one Tim Burton planned to use for his film, he simply stated “All of them!” While the film has these interesting glimmers of what made the original what it was, it never dwells too long on those sparks to really give the piece any warmth. Instead the film rapid fires through what could have easily been two or three decent sequels, on its way to a conclusion that just has it straight copying the original with a much more forgettable musical number. The performances and beloved characters are what really make this collection of vignettes ultimately watchable. While Keaton doesn’t seem to have lost a beat, its Ryder and Ortega who feel squandered here, going through the motions of this arduously plotted cash-in, and don’t even get me started on Monica Bellucci. She been relegated to the bizarre role Burton forces on all of his love interests of this ghastly mute apparition, who is simply wasted here as the first antagonist, who quickly swapped out half way through.
While there was some interesting potential with the film’s examination of motherhood, with three generations of Deetz women under the same roof, Burton instead squanders that potential, by throwing in a love interest for Astrid in one of the most artificial plot twists imaginable. This while all while seeing how often he can shoe-horn in Keaton and allow this convoluted mess of a film to coast on the audience’s nostalgic good graces.That’s the problem with these kinds of sequels to beloved properties, it has to be done for the right reason, and the director has to have something legitimately engaging to say. Otherwise the film will be retconned and forgotten a few years later when some younger filmmaker has the idea to reignite the slumbering series and finally cracks it – Alien Romulus for example. This film just seems like a last ditch effort by Burton, who taught me this exact same lesson when he decided to tackle the Planet of the Apes franchise, only to turn in a film that was quietly scrubbed from the zeitgeist, like this one will no doubt be.
