by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $13.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe, Burn Gorman
Intro:
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice won’t possess your soul or change your life, and if you’re expecting an equal to the wonderful original, you’ll be disappointed.
Legacy sequels have arguably been around since 1986, with Martin Scorsese’s The Colour of Money, but they’ve been breeding like rabbits this last decade or so. The concept of combining elements of a classic original with the fresh face of youthful zeitgeist is irresistible to studios keen to cash in on that nostalgia dollar. That’s not to say all legacy sequels are bad, mind you. Sometimes they’re surprisingly good, as was the case with 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick or 2018’s Halloween. Sometimes they’re uneven like 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife or 2015’s Jurassic World. Other times they’re a bit shit, like Terminator: Genisys or Independence Day: Resurgence or Matrix: Resurrections or most of the Star Wars sequel trilogy or… well, you get the idea. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the legacy sequel to the 36-year-old Beetlejuice is the latest from director Tim Burton and it falls very much in that middle category.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice rejoins everyone’s favourite movie goth, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), who now hosts a trashy but popular TV show about haunted houses, is ill-advisedly dating smarmy douchebag Rory (Justin Theroux) and has a very strained relationship with her teenage daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega). After the bizarrely farcical death of her father Charles (very much not played by Jeffrey Jones this time, for depressing reasons you can Google), Lydia, Rory, Astrid and Delia (Catherine O’Hara) return to the small town of Winter River to farewell the old fella.
Naturally, Astrid comes across the iconic model from the original film and finds herself moving into the orbit of trickster demon Betelgeuse aka Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) who is dealing with his own problems, including an ex-wife Delores (Monica Bellucci) who is a literal soul-sucker. There’s also a subplot about a potential romantic engagement for Astrid, the mysterious location of Lydia’s deceased husband and Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson, an actor who played cops in movies and now tries to police the afterlife.
Friends, this is a movie overflowing with stuff, even without the Maitlands (apparently Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are too old to play ghosts these days), and 105 minutes just isn’t long enough to fit it all in. Consequently, some of the narrative threads feel loose and dangly.
Lydia’s story works, for the most part, and Jenna Ortega is good as a teenager mortified by her mum’s spooky antics. Micheal Keaton hasn’t missed a trick in the last three and a half decades, either, and his portrayal as the “ghost with the most” is once again a joy. However, his subplot with Delores never goes anywhere particularly interesting, which is frankly a waste of a perfectly good Monica Bellucci.
Also, it has to be said, the Tim Burton from 1987 is a very different director to the Tim Burton from 2024, and while this is the most engaged that he’s seemed for a while, there’s never a sense of that quirky, lunatic creativity that made his earlier works such beloved classics.
That said, there’s a lot of charm here. The cast are having fun, there are visually inventive sight gags and wry afterlife humour and while the film never really makes a case for why this particular story needed to be told now, it’s an agreeable enough time for those in the mood for escapist chuckles.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice won’t possess your soul or change your life, and if you’re expecting an equal to the wonderful original, you’ll be disappointed. If, however, you’re happy to engage with a breezy legacy sequel with a few decent gags and goofy supernatural shenanigans, then turn on the juice and see what shakes loose.
