In 1988, director Tim Burton and Michael Keaton teamed up for the supernatural comedy Beetlejuice. For years and years and years, rumors of a sequel have been popping up, but now we get finally the freaky follow up.
I'm pleased to report that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a second chapter well worth the wait. Just like its predecessor, it makes no assumptions other than to provide its fan base with more of what they got in the original as well as introducing enough ingredients to make this a satisfying effort.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice picks up 30 years later with Winona Ryder's Lydia Deetz, now a successful TV host of a show called Ghost House. Justin Theroux is her boyfriend/producer Rory.
Lydia gets some tragic news from her stepmother Delia (Catherine O'Hara) about the death of her father Charles (Jeffery Jones), after he's killed in a shark attack in an bizarre stop motion animated sequence.
Lydia goes home for the funeral with her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who thinks her mom is a fake and she's still mourning the death of her own father. Astrid also meets a boy and they begin to take a liking to each other.
Astrid discovers a portal into the Afterlife and Lydia has no choice but to summon Keaton's Beetlejuice to help get her out. It's here where the movie kicks into its madcap energy that dominated the first movie and this sequel does pretty much the same.
When we get to the Afterlife, we meet a series of creepy characters, including Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), a supernatural detective who was an actor himself before death. Monica Bellucci plays Delores, Beetlejuice's ex-wife who is on the hunt for him and she also can suck the souls out of the dead.
The only characters not returning for this one are Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis' Adam and Barbara Maitland, respectively. According to the script, they found a loophole and moved on. Their presences are missed and might have made the story more intriguing.
Like the original, Burton knows how to recreate what worked so wonderfully well in the original and apply the same techniques here: Unique set designs, practical effects such as puppets and the aforementioned stop motion animation instead of an overabundance of cheesy CGI. He's clearly in his element and he's clearly having a blast.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice sees Burton getting his Gothic mojo back and at the age of 73, Keaton still has the same manic, outlandish qualities that made the character so iconic. It's actually to their strong suits that they don't aspire to make anything other than a movie the hardcore fans who have been clamoring for this sequel have been wanting to see for years. In that case, it's mission accomplished.
The finale does go a little overboard with its characters and the plot and humor stumbles occasionally, but what does work is entertaining enough and the visual elements are a sight to behold.
Will we get Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice? Who knows? For now, it's good to see that the Juice is loose once again.
Grade: B+
(Rated PG-13 for violent content, macabre and bloody images, strong language, some suggestive material and brief drug use.)