Producer/director Tim Burton’s loooongtime-coming sequel to 1988’s original Beetlejuice features some wildly ghoulish fun for devotees, and yet the finished product is so full of freaky fan service, frantic plotting and nutty new characters that it eventually feels more than a little overstuffed. And perhaps that might suit demonic agent-of-chaos Beetlejuice (um, Betelgeuse?), for a while, but it does get somewhat exhausting.
With a gap between films (36 years) even bigger than the 28 years between Tron and Tron: Legacy, this has been discussed by Burton and others since the 1990s, and might, at various points, have been written by Heathers scripter Daniel Waters, and/or featured Beetlejuice going to Paris, Hawaii, or the old West. But now, thanks to screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (creators of Netflix’s Wednesday), we finally have a proper second chapter, in all its messy glory.
Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder, a major player again after Netflix’s Stranger Things) is now a 50something Manhattan Mom who hosts a popular paranormal TV show called Ghost House. She’s in a tricky relationship with the show’s producer, the icky Rory (Justin Theroux in a rare comedic role), and she stops the taping of an episode when contacted by her stepmom Delia (Catherine O’Hara from TV’s Schitt’s Creek) about the death of Lydia’s Dad Charles (originally played by the problematic Jeffrey Jones).
This leads them to pick up Lydia’s semi-alienated daughter Astrid (Jenna ‘Wednesday’ Ortega) and return to that scary house in Winter River, where Rory plans to marry Lydia on Halloween, Astrid gets to know local lad Jeremy (Arthur Conti), and Delia hopes to produce ‘Art’. And, while all this is happening, Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) is also seen in that very Burton-esque afterlife as he agonises about still loving Lydia and generally causes trouble, even as a soul-sucking reanimated witch (Monica Bellucci) comes for him.
That plot summary doesn’t include: a ghost detective named Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe having fun); an amusing cameo by a Burton pal from his Batman Returns; the plight of Charles Deetz in the Beyond; a choir sadly singing (what else?) the late great Harry Belafonte’s Day-O (The Banana Boat Song); Beetlejuice crooning Richard Marx; and the many and bizarre levels of Burton and Beetlejuice’s afterlife, including the rather cool ‘Soul Train’. No wonder the original film’s key players (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin as the Maitlands) don’t actually appear here: not only couldn’t the budget have paid for them, but the storyline would have imploded.
And how about a Part 3, a.k.a. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice? Well, if it takes another 36 years then Burton will be 102. So, well, why not?
