BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE— 4 STARS

When it comes to legacy sequels, as we’ve come to call them, interested audiences often pose the question of whether or not enough was enough the first time around? They ponder if a sequel blowing the dust off of old stories and characters is going to beat a dead horse with embarrassment or uncork a finely aged wine. Matching the same hefty 36 years the Top Gun films savored between installments, time has only added to the legend for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Generations have now stacked together to enjoy the “Ghost with the Most” to the point where unexpected family feels sweeten and soften the pockmarks of the movie’s gnarly surface. 

Composer Danny Elfman’s tuba-pumping march of a film score reintroduces the faroff fictional hamlet of Winter River and the matching town model built by the non-returning Maitlands. The parade of little clues, homages, and easter eggs begins right then and there as time catches up to the modern day to reveal the all-grown-up Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) leveraging her psychic medium abilities to be the celebrity host of Ghost House, a New York City-based show investigating public claims of haunted houses. Away from the cameras, she’s a widowed single mom to her rebellious, non-believer boarding school daughter Astrid (Wednesday superstar Jenna Ortega) while being simultaneously courted and coerced into many inroads by her doting, slimy, and trendy manager/producer Rory (Emmy winner Justin Thereoux). Multiplying Lydia’s issues is handling her eccentric artist mother Delia Deetz (the returning Catherine O’Hara).

As fate would have it (or at least the extraneous need to write original cast member and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Jones out of the story), Beetlejuice Beetlejuice uses a death in the family just before Halloween to bring the Deetzs back together under their pastoral Winter River house-on-the-hill roof. A new soul in play opens a fresh conduit to the very active blue collar underworld previously created by Michael McDowell, Warren Skaaren, and Larry Wilson and updated by the Wednesday and Smallville writing team of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar working off the original remake treatment done by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies scribe Seth Grahame-Smith. The most opportunistic fiend looking to settle old scores and shoot his shot with Lydia back in his reach is our titular demon made famous by Michael Keaton. However, Beetlejuice is up to his own natty hair with his current problems evading his newly reconstituted, soul-sucking ex-wife Delores (Monica Belluci, vamping it up as the slinky and stalking heavy) and the pursuing former B-movie actor and long-arm-of-the-law Wolf Jackson (the incomparable Willem Dafoe) and his deceased deputies. 

LESSON #1: BE WARY OF PRECARIOUS PROPOSITIONS– As the wild and wholly hijinks ensue in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the key catalysts and turning points for assembled ensemble walking the tightrope between the land of the living and the land of the dead all come forth from dangled, dramatic, and dangerous propositions. Without revealing too much, we have characters high and low willing to make deals that sell their proverbial soul to join, escape, rescue, trap, bolster, or prevent other individuals. Monkeywrenches are everywhere, with some than disastrous implications that occur where the main man’s name is said three times. Quite often, bad choices require better choices to fix messes with entertaining and humorous results. 

As this macabre adventure simmers and swirls in Tim Burton’s cinematic cauldron, this reinvigorated microcosm’s artistic uniqueness and technical brilliance glow from all corners and levels. Much like the 1988 original, Burton aptly favors the gaudy, stamped-and-sewn practical approaches to makeup, set decoration, costumes, and special effects. Four-time Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood and Emmy-winning Wednesday production designer Mark Scruton and their deep craft teams provided much of the heavy work to create this clown show, but special attention and kudos are deserved by creature effects creative supervisor Neal Scanlan (Episodes VII-IX of Star Wars) and property master David Balfour (Ready Player One) for their respective little digital and substantive cherries on top they gave each setting. The embellishments of the murky milieu leap off the screen.

LESSON #2: THE ART OF DARK WIT– The decadently disgusting ambiance from Tim Burton is made all the more alluring by its cavalcade of jokes popping off like whipper snappers thrown on pavement for a fleet-footed 104 minutes. Witty dark humor is one of the more complex vibes to sell to a movie audience. Folks have a tricky range of love or hate for the acquired taste of black comedy when gallows humor like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice veers to weird farce and fantasy. The key is pacing in the delivery of sight gags and scripted zingers. Panache soaked in irony and injected like this have the potential to dwell too long, too frequently, or too strongly. The fine line is knowing how to hold the jokes for the right moment and the right rhythm, and, by golly, does Beetlejuice Beetlejuice have that in spades…and stripes!

The success on the comedic front belongs to the committed cast. Getting Beetlejuice Beetlejuice off of the cemetery ground probably doesn’t work without Winona Ryder’s 21st century comeback by way of Stranger Things, yet she comfortably steps into the nucleus of this tentpole-level blockbuster, playing the mature parent and beleaguered survivor all in one. Jenna Ortega’s signature deadpan charisma fits this movie like a glove. Justin Theroux intentionally grates, but someone has to play the boob. It might as well be someone sly and professional at doing so. Above all, the absolute hoot that is Catherine O’Hara is dialed in to steal every scene she’s in, and Burton, rightfully so, lets her. 

LESSON #3: COMPLETE CONTROL OF A CHARACTER– Even with O’Hara setting up and knocking down laughs, the toplining designated namesake will always drive the bulk of the outlandish energy present. With liberated willingness to don the garb and prosthetics again at 73 years old, Michael Keaton completely imbues what was then– and is certainly cemented as such now– a one-of-a-kind cinematic icon of a character most other actors couldn’t achieve or even dream of for the storied careers. Even nearly four decades later, every tick, quirk, mannerism, or catchphrase– familiar or new— coming out of Keaton is a seasoned stroke of acting genius. Sit back and marvel at the unabashed fun and delirious delights he conducts.