In an artistic and professional slump for a dozen years, filmmaker Tim Burton decided to do the logical thing in such circumstances: return to a sure thing by revisiting a past success, but a success that also allowed him to impose his unique style for the first time. This is how, thirty-six years after the release of Beetlejuice (Betelgeuse), a comedy about a deceased couple trying to get rid of the new occupants of their house, is released Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Betelgeuse Betelgeuse), which brings back several original characters to the said mansion. Once again, Burton serves us a joyfully macabre vision enhanced by old-school trickery and special effects.
Once a goth teenager fascinated by the afterlife, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is forced to return home after her father’s sudden death. Able to communicate with the dead since the events of the original film, Lydia hosts a spiritualism show produced by her narcissistic fiancé Rory (Justin Theroux).
Karma being what it is, Lydia is now the mother of Astrid (Jenny Ortega), a teenager who despises her in the same way she herself despised her father and stepmother. The latter is still in the picture (thankfully, since she is played by the hilarious Catherine O’Hara), her self-centeredness unchanged.
And of course, there’s Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), the ineffable lout who rages between the afterlife and the world of the living. With his shenanigans, he almost succeeded in marrying the very young Lydia in the first film. Here he is doing it again.
But this time, Beetlejuice will have to deal with the return of Delores (Monica Bellucci), his ex-wife from the time of the Black Death (evoked in Mario Bava style). After many years, this dismembered corpse bride has managed to patch herself up (in Sally’s style in A Nightmare Before Christmas / The Nightmare Before Christmas) and has some scores to settle.
As you can see, the dark, gloomy humor, typical of Burton’s most personal films, is there. The fabulous cast is in tune, especially Ryder, O’Hara, and of course Keaton, with a supernatural energy.
Full of inventiveness
The constant reminders of the original film risk making certain passages cryptic, even incomprehensible, for neophytes. Others will smile a lot. The main flaw of the film is actually an overabundance of secondary characters.
It’s as if every character from the 1988 movie was eliminated from the 2024 movie, and was replaced by two new characters. This results in a few extra subplots, and some lengths in the middle.
Full of visual inventiveness, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice exudes a pleasure in directing that we haven’t really felt in a Tim Burton film since Sleepy Hollow, Big Fish (Big Fish: The Legend of the Big Fish), and maybe Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Sweeney Todd — the evil barber of Fleet Street).
A half-success in short, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will not enter the pantheon of the filmmaker’s filmography, unlike these three titles as well as Beetlejuicebut it is nonetheless a return to cinematic life. Not bad, for a film obsessed with death.