At the movies: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

 

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

I was worried about this film.

The trailers looked and felt like the frantic and flailing treading of water that comes from trying to recapture something elusive. The vibe felt like a court-mandated truce between practical elements and digital tech that would never dream of talking shit about one another even as they never seemed to mesh in a visually cohesive manner. The haphazard projection of the press screening (in the wrong aspect ratio) leaves a few questions in place about how exactly this film is supposed to look- but real talk: I had enough of a good time that I’ll happily check it out again. Will it become the perennial family favorite that the first one did? Well, it’s too soon to say. But it’s not a Greatest Hits movie, and it does cave in under the weight of previous elements.

If anything, what Beetlejuice Beetlejuice most reminds me of is The Last Jedi. I didn’t love everything about that film, either, but it felt so distinctive compared to its predecessor, and so willing to make its own choices that it felt special. And time has burnished its controversial reputation, and validated most of its risks. And to call a legacy sequel with tie-in car insurance/sales ads (including one with a “Day-O” rewrite that was so awful it almost killed off any desire I had to see this film) risky is certainly a wild development. But Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t feel particularly safe or conventional.

It’s hard to recapture how the original film played back in ‘88. First at the Dayton Mall cinemas with my Dad, a second time at a long since gone drive-in in Gallatin (with Flowers In The Attic as the back half of the double feature!), there were elements that certainly clicked through (I was already on board the Tim Burton train because of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, which is absolutely the best movie for an eleven year-old to have on repeat when recovering from having an emergency tonsillectomy). But the O.G. Beetlejuice is a mood, and absolutely a hangout film that derives power from multiple viewings. There is a strength in the ramshackle, and this lesson is the direct throughline from the 1988 original to this weird little bauble of a film.

Once again, Catherine O’Hara defines the film and gets the best lines and the outfits that stick in your mind forever. Nothing as epoch-defining as her opera gloves-as-headband in 1988, but thanks to the media footprint of Schitt’s Creek, the whole world knows that no one wears clothes like O’Hara. Given the way that Nightmare Before Christmas-themed accessories have become their own perennial industry, is it too much to ask for Delia Deetz merch from her Human Canvas installation (which we see just enough of to be completely captivated)?

It is the character of Delia and her entrenchment in the art world that leads to the visual keystone of the whole film- that gorgeous, asymmetrical house; born of Maitland Hardware and the paranormal couture of Otho and Delia, a fusion of aesthetics that, in the intervening almost four decades, has become one of the defining movie homes of the ‘80s. That house, shrouded in mourning vestments, is both a conceptual marvel and emotional grounding (as well as a tip of the hat to Christo and Jean-Claude), and it helps the various and sundry pieces of the film cohere. Do I wish it had the glorious queer scalpel of the late, great Glenn Shadix’ voice? Absolutely. (You can tell that Delia has inherited all the would-have-been Otho lines, which is as it should be.) As for the Jeffrey Jones-shaped hole in the film, it’s a Schrödinger’s Cat approach to the character of Charles Deetz

The biggest gamble that the film takes, other than existing in the first place, is in Winona Ryder’s Lydia. In the original film, she is ground zero for multiple generations to find themselves in Byronic flourish and skill with a withering quip. Lydia is both mirror and aspiration for everyone mortified by the tyranny of family tradition, and she is perfect. Which makes depicting the passage of time and how it has changed this pure Gen X icon both incredibly gutsy and kind of shocking. Still blessed/cursed with the gift of seeing the dead, the passing years have found her monetizing her specialness, dabbling in a vague pill habit (a subplot that is left dangerously underexplained), and caught in the orbit of a manager/lover (Justin Theroux, who is pitched at 120% but somehow only able to output on a “mellow” setting) who exhibits different facets of the madcap control freak that still haunt her from her time as the reluctant would-be bride of Beetlejuice.

Burton understands that too much Beetlejuice tips the scales, and thankfully, Keaton pops up in exactly the right proportion to the runtime. His undead Tex Avery vibe works best as a gag machine that can be fit into the story whenever he’s called on, and it’s comparable to the first film’s similarly judicious use of the character.

As Lydia’s daughter Astrid, Jenna Ortega is in a very interesting narrative space. She has to incarnate several recent generations, including the skepticism that Millennials and Gen Z rightfully feel toward everything that has come before, as well as define the voice of petulant youth – these aspects give her a strong voice and a rock solid foundation, but they don’t let her be a whole lot of fun. Which, honestly, is a fair reflection of the world around us and what previous generations have done with it. Thankfully, Astrid gets her own storyline that lets her have some terror-filled adventures, including a first date and a multidimensional caper that allows for some reconciliations (both emotionally and cosmically), in addition to a possibly unintentional narrative point that susceptibility to supernatural subterfuge may be a genetically dominant trait.

There’s also Willem Dafoe as the ghost of an actor famous for playing a cop who, in the afterlife, has become a high-ranking detective (it’s easier to enjoy onscreen than it is to explain- he’s probably the closest equivalent we have to Sylvia Sidney’s Juno in that he sets the tone we have for the bureaucracy of The Other Side), and he has a mad joie de vivre that helps reinforce some of the more tangential aspects of the script. Real talk: it’s a very weird choice to have Monica Bellucci in your movie and give her absolutely nothing to do. She has an iconic look, and gets to dole out the gnarliest kills, and it still feels like she’s barely in the film. This is the Eva Green/Helena Bonham Carter/Lisa Marie part, and it will likewise fuel a thousand Halloween costumes. It’s also an unexpected weird little treat to find Torchwood/Pacific Rim’s Burn Gorman meshing into the proceedings as a Connecticut priest whose interaction with the realm of the undead feels like it could be setting up a wacky take on Nightbreed’s Father Ashbury in the future.

Easily Burton’s best film since Frankenweenie (and before that, Sleepy Hollow), this manages to finally fix the catastrophic legacy of Big Fish- here is Burton finding a path to reconciling generations without completely belt-sanding away the edges that made his work distinctive in the first place.

This film’s musical setpiece may be the Richard Harris “MacArthur Park,” but thankfully, we’re bookended with the sublime Donna Summer version. Aesthetically, we’re in good hands.