Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Review

“The Juice is loose!” – Beetlejuice

Finally, we get the sequel that those of us of a certain age have been waiting a long 36 years for, and one that we didn’t really think we’d get. After the release of Beetlejuice in 1988, I remember rumours being reported in various film magazines that a sequel was in development, I remember clearly one snippet claiming that the sequel was titled Beetlejuice in Love but nothing ever came of it. And over the years, I guess nobody really had a reason to suppose that any thing would ever transpire. But here we are. And over the past couple of years, you could be forgiven for thinking that the movie industry hasn’t moved on much over the past three and a half decades; Michael Keaton was back as Batman in last year’s The Flash, Beetlejuice returned in an all-new story, and we caught up with the Ghostbusters. And reassuringly, they’re all still great.

None of these films have tried to gloss over the time elapsed in-between the films, all have dealt with the passage of time, and such is the case with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Everyone, well, on the mortal plane anyway, has moved on. Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is now a grown-up goth, having embraced her ability to see ghosts and is the host of a supernatural reality show. Her mother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) is still a stuck up, pretentious New York artist, still heavily influenced by the New Wave, and living the way of the New Age. Lydia has a daughter, busily distancing herself from her embarrassing mother while in boarding school, this is Astrid (Jenna Ortega – who astounds me by still convincingly playing roles of girls in their mid-teens despite being in her twenties.)

The Deetz women have to reunite when family tragedy strikes, and Charles, the family patriarch, dies in a plane crash. I had been wondering how they’d cover the absence of Jeffrey Jones in the film due to his current status as a convicted sex offender. This is a far better way than recasting. We’re shown the circumstances of his death, where he survived the plane crash at sea, but his top half was devoured by a shark, in a stop motion animation sequence. Some have complained that this technique “took them out of the film” but personally, I felt it was a stroke of genius on the part of director Tim Burton to bring a touch of his off kilter visual style to the movie, making it satisfyingly Burtonesque.

Delia decides that there will be a wake, in the form of a sort of festival at the old house in Winter River, where the first film was set. If you recall, that was where we last saw the Maitlands, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis. Now, they’re also absent from this movie, understandably because the dead don’t age, but the actors have. Again, no recasting – their absence is covered by a line of dialogue. BUT, there’s a certain mischievous chaos demon who’s still hanging around, and he’s just waiting to be summoned.

And that’s just the setup. We now enter totally spoiler free territory.

What follows is a fast-paced film which just works on every level. Michael Keaton is absolutely great in the title role, proving once again that he is, as I’ve said many, many times, Hollywood’s most under-rated actor. Times have changed since 1988 and we’re living in a “woke” world now – a term that didn’t even exist back then. Political correctness has become an all-devouring monster that seems to defecate blandness that even the most sensitive of us shouldn’t be able find offensive but some still manage to. The character of Beetlejuice however hasn’t changed one iota. He is as manically rude, crude and self-serving as he ever was which works because THAT is his established character, and seeing as he is after all, a chaos demon, why should he adopt a politically correct attitude? The intervening years are but the blink of an eye to him. I understand that both Burton and Keaton agreed that the character should retain his abrasive nature to keep him in character.

Jenna Ortega fits in well with her offbeat family here, playing down the obvious Wednesday Addams similarities, and becoming the “normal” one of the family - though we do get a very brief glimpse here and there, particularly as she’s about to launch into a dance sequence, there’s the Wednesday smirk. Speaking of music, yes, the iconic Banana Boat Song by Harry Belafonte does manage a cameo, but the featured song this time around is MacArthur Park by Richard Harris, as well as the cover version by Donna Summer.

This sequel has been long awaited, and it doesn’t disappoint. Will we get another, called maybe Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to make it a trilogy? Well, I guess anything’s possible but they’d better not leave it as long. I can’t guarantee that Burton or Keaton will be around in another 34 years, and I sure as hell can’t promise I’ll be wandering into Cineworld at the age of 98.

As for the original Beetlejuice, well that was released a few years before we had the wonderous world-wide web, so that wasn’t reviewed by me at the time. However, I happen to have included it in this year’s Shocktober: The 13 Screams of Halloween which will be launched on Oct 1 at this link.

All together now; Heeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyo!

Rob Rating = 9