Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Just because Tim Burton has made worse movies doesn’t mean this one is good

Michael Keaton resurrects the franchise singlehandedly in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Thirty-six years after she escaped the clutches of The Ghost with the Most and embraced her strange and unusual talents for communicating with the dead, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is still miserable. Sure, she ended the film Beetlejuice embracing life with the help of her ghostly friends the Maitlands, and doing spooky karaoke with a dead football team as backup but now seeing the dead has become so burdensome to Lydia that she needs pills to get through her day.

Part of that misery is the fact that she’s turned her abilities into a business, hosting a ghost-hunting show that’s made her rich. The other part of her misery is that her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), thinks Lydia is a con artist because she can’t see the ghost of Astrid’s father.

And while the Deetz Clan seems destined to live separate lives, another tragedy forces them back together. Lydia’s dad, Charles (played previously by Jeffrey Jones), is killed in a freak accident. Lydia must now bring her stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) and Astrid together to mourn and hopefully fix her family.

Unfortunately for Lydia, returning to the family home also opens up an opportunity for Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) to entangle himself with the family again.

Can Lydia escape Beetlejuice’s clutches once and for all? Will Astrid ever believe her mother? Can Tim Burton still make a good movie?

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is easily the best movie director Tim Burton has made in a decade. But if we’re being realistic, Burton has been floundering cinematically since 1999’s Sleepy Hollow. And while Beetlejuice Beetlejuice does capitalize on both the ever-popular nostalgia porn genre and the prowess of Keaton’s comedic skills, the plot and themes in this movie are a mess. Sure, there are flares of the old Burton brilliance — a fun Claymation sequence and a beautiful black and white tribute to Mario Bava among the standouts — but not enough to keep the movie from veering off the rails. There’s a particularly dated and odd Soul Train reference that feels pulled from a Zucker Brothers movie which Burton keeps cutting back to. It’s these choices that make this reviewer concerned that Burton’s taste level is irrevocably altered from his heyday.

There are so many plotlines, none of which are particularly developed. It feels like Burton had six ideas for a Beetlejuice sequel and crammed them all into one movie. There’s a plot about Monica Bellucci hunting down Beetlejuice. Yes, Bellucci is striking as a stapled-together witch literally hell-bent on revenge, but her quest has absolutely zero impact on the rest of the plots and is wrapped up in the most ridiculously dismissive way possible. There’s also a subplot with Willem Dafoe as an actor who died while playing a cop and now spends his afterlife policing the undead. It’s a funny concept and Dafoe is always a game performer, but if you cut the plotline entirely you’d lose nothing from the story.

And while superficial plotlines are irksome, the real issue is the plotlines Burton chose to continue from his previous (and vastly superior) film. It’s understandable that Burton would choose not to cast Jeffrey Jones in another movie because of his criminal convictions, but it’s rather odd that so much of the movie is focused on or around Charles. Instead of simply killing him off and moving on, we get a headless Charles (played by a stunt double) walking around the afterlife and a Claymation sequence about his death. It’s like Burton can’t stop bringing him up. Even odder is the transformation Delia has made from superficial, untalented ninny to...wise matriarch of the Deetz family. Yes, Delia still has insane artistic impulses, but she’s the smartest, least hysterical member of the family now, which is rather disquieting.

But the most unforgivable thing Burton chose to do in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is snuff out the spark in Lydia Deetz. For some bizarre reason, Lydia is still rocking the Goth ponytail and bang combo nearly forty years later (even though her hair changes in the original movie). She’s also lost any of her rebellious spirit or zest for the undead. Burton doesn’t bother to explain any of this, we’re just meant to see Ryder with her spiky bangs and exclaim “Hey! I remember that!”. But this Lydia is a shell of a person. Her passivity is nearly pathological. She just stares at everything with big eyes and does nothing. It’s a horrid betrayal of the strong-willed interesting character she was in the original film.

Luckily for the movie, and the viewers, Burton left Beetlejuice alone. Keaton is unleashed in all his scenes to do his fast-talking demonic car salesman schtick. And for the most part, it works. Whenever Keaton is on screen, it’s easy to laugh and forget that Lydia Deetz is a shell of herself and the rest of the movie makes no sense. It’s also unfortunate that Keaton is in a relatively small portion of the movie. Essentially he gets the Hannibal Lecter edit — he’s only in the movie for about 20 minutes total, but he’ll also be the only thing anyone wants to talk about.

While Burton does manage to play all the hits, this overstuffed movie just feels hollow. There’s no real emotional relevance and beyond Keaton mugging for the camera, nothing that interesting to see. The movie itself did inspire this reviewer to take a look at some of my favorite Burton films from the 90s, so in that way, it at least offered me some entertainment. If you’re a fan of classic Tim Burton, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice might inspire you to rewatch his classics as well. If you’re a fan of modern Tim Burton, seek help.

Verdict: A mediocre retread of former brilliance is more depressing than entertaining.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is rated PG-13 and is in theaters September 6.