Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

What struck me recently about Tim Burton is that I don’t think any younger directors followed in his footsteps. 

Certainly Wes Anderson comes closer given that they are both obsessed with production design. But Anderson has never been interested in anything remotely spooky or bizarre. 

Burton lives in the macabre that a young mind might enjoy. It’s not horror, it’s that time in your life when you discover death and try to grapple with what it all means. 

Burton’s solution is to laugh at it and to let yourself dress all in black.

It’s no wonder that his later years success is an adaptation of the Addams Family that focuses on the original goth girl, Wednesday Addams. 

Burton, Charles Addams and the scarier bits of Roald Dahl all inhabit the same corner of fiction. Spooky and morbid with a dollop of creaky jokes. 

A Beetlejuice sequel wasn’t really on my radar. The first movie is a classic but I never thought it needed a follow up.  And I am exceedingly tired of these nostalgia plays. 

But I found myself at a theater awash in sequels and remakes and this looked like the best option. 

Glad to say I think I choose correctly. 

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has a sharp script, tight funny scenes and enough scares and gross out moments to satisfy any fan of the original movie. 

The characters and actors nail the assignment especially Catherine O’Hara who’s Delia Deetz gets to have some fun teasing her step-daughter Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz who has grown up and raised another mopey teen girl who is eternally angry with her mom. 

O’Hara also delivers one of the best lines in movies this year near the end of this flick’s machinations. I don’t want to give it away but I howled not just because it was funny but also because it was a perfect encapsulation of that character in one line.

I had a lot of sympathy for Lydia Deetz who was a bright light as a teenager in the first movie and has a messy life as an adult. 

That’s the way it works for most people, the right job never happens, a death of a loved one knocks us down and we have to keep going even when the ghosts in our head just won’t shut up. 

Ryder played her with a lot of fragility, maybe too much, but it makes sense even if it didn’t make me happy. 

Michael Keaton remains a perfect human vehicle for a fast talking trickster demon. For those of you who were fans of the Beetlejuice cartoon I think you will enjoy just how much he’s Lydia’s sidekick and even protector here. 

Not that he’s reformed exactly but the movie knows how much fun it is to watch The Juice deliver comeuppance on people who deserve it. 

It’s the real fundamental rule of this particular universe – Beetlejuice is not the bad guy. 

He’s a force of nature, and disgusting but real evil belongs to the people Burton and the writers actually hate. In the first movie it was New York centric yuppies. In this one, it’s sensitive modern men and ex-wives. 

Burton also wisely understands that a little of this will be all most of us can take. A joke zips by, it works in a light way, and then we rush on to the next thing. There’s 90 minutes of it, with just enough subplots to spice up the story when it lags. 

I went into the theater in a bad mood and this dollop of dark humor brightened my day. 

Given the title of this sequel and the ending (not exactly a cliffhanger but not exactly a final moment either) it seems certain there will be a third one of these. 

It’s also one of the biggest box office hits of the year. I suspect if everyone wants to come back it’s already got a green light.

I think you can measure the success of this film this way. Now, instead of facing the third one with dread I’ll be looking forward to it.