In the last decade, we’ve seen quite the influx of sequels arriving decades after the previous entry in a franchise, what with “Mary Poppins Returns” (a 54-year gap) and “Doctor Sleep” (39 years), “Top Gun: Maverick” (36 years) and “Blade Runner 2049” (35 years), “Coming 2 America” (33 years) and “Mad Max: Fury Road” (30 years).
I’ve enjoyed all of these to some degree, with “Fury Road” topping the list and ranking as the one of the great action movies of all time. Now it’s time to sing Come mister tally man, tally me banana to herald the release of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the sequel to Tim Burton’s beloved fantasy horror staple from 1988, with Burton returning to direct and demonstrating he still has an uncanny touch for all things macabre and weird. (In the intervening years, there was an animated series, a number of video games and a Broadway musical, but this is just the second movie in the franchise.)
My feelings about this direct sequel are similar to my impressions of the original: it’s a mixed bag of tricks, heavily favoring comedy over horror, with many of the jokes landing but more than a few falling flat. There are numerous callbacks to the first film, including the fantastic stop-motion animation, as well as an elaborate lip-syncing production number that looks like it was more fun to film than it is to watch. (I know that’s probably an unpopular take, but it didn’t hit with me the first time around and it feels similarly strained here.)
The sequel catches up with former goth teen Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder, fantastic), who is now the host of cheesy, tabloid-type TV show called “Ghost House with Lydia Deetz” and is plagued by recent visions of the one, the only, the motor-mouthed, the horrible Betelgeuse aka Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton). In a bit of casting that’s almost too easy but spot-on, Jenna Ortega plays Lydia’s sullen teenage daughter Astrid, who barely tolerates her mother (Lydia is listed as “Alleged Mom” in Astrid’s iPhone contacts) and firmly believes there’s no such thing as ghosts.
After the sudden death of Lydia’s father, Charles, the family returns to the town of Winter River for the memorial service, with Catherine O’Hara’s still wacky but now hugely successful abstract artist Delia planning to sell off the “Ghost House.” (Registered sex offender Jeffrey Jones, who played Charles, does not return; his character’s brief appearance is rendered via CGI stop motion.)
The overstuffed plot brings in a host of new characters. Justin Theroux is the smarmy, ponytailed Rory, who is Lydia’s TV producer and boyfriend. Monica Bellucci plays the terrifying soul-sucker Delores, who was once married to Beetlejuice, and that’s the cue for a brilliantly rendered, black-and-white movie-within-the-movie outlining their Creature Feature past.
Willem Dafoe hams it up as the quite dead but still pompous Wolf Jackson, a second-rate action star who continues to play detective in the Neitherworld, while Arthur Conti is Jeremy, a sensitive local teen who connects with Astrid. (When Astrid asks her mother about the Maitlands, the newly-dead couple played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in the original, Lydia explains they found a loophole and moved on. Astrid might as well have winked at the camera when she responds, “How convenient.”)
All these years later, Keaton does a remarkable job of reprising the manic energy and wisecracking duplicity of Beetlejuice, who agrees to help Lydia save Astrid from joining the dead if she’ll finally marry him, while Winona Ryder does equally fine albeit less showy work (virtually any work would be less showy) in her return as Lydia.
With the great and prolific Danny Elfman once again providing a mischievously effective score, and needle drops on the soundtrack including “Tragedy” by the Bee Gees and “Right Here Waiting” by Richard Marx, not to mention an extended, ghoulish tribute to “Soul Train,” there’s never a shortage of energy to a film that is a consistently creative feast for the eyes and ears, even when the plot veers all over the place (and between two worlds). A couple of the new characters are given intriguing introductions, but their storylines are truncated, and their fates are sealed in such rapid fashion that even the quickest trip to the restroom will have you wondering what happened to them.
At times, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” takes some big swings and misses; one new character is particularly grotesque without being the least bit funny. Was a sequel really necessary? Probably not, but thanks to Burton’s offbeat genius and a fine cast that is game for anything and everything, it’s a welcome exercise in ghostly nostalgia.