The first Beetlejuice was a rare lightning in a bottle movie that came out at the right time and appealed to mass audiences. The mixture of madness, macabre and musical numbers made the movie a surprise hit which was helped with Michael Keaton’s madcap performance.
Keaton only has 17 minutes of screen time in the first movie and was reportedly only on set for two weeks, which makes sense since half of his scenes are just him by himself. Yet, next to his role as Batman/Bruce Wayne, it’s one of his most memorable. It also made Tim Burton a household name as he went on to make the 1989 Batman movie and the rest of the cast became mostly well-known.
A sequel has been in development hell longer than some of the cast members in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice have been alive. It’s probably been longer before their parents got together. When a movie takes many decades to materialize, that’s never a good sign.
And it feels like the they cobbled together all the scripts that have been floating around since 1988 and just cherry picked certain elements. To say there’s multiple plot lines is an understatement. I was never really sure which is the main plotline or what is was supposed to be. The first one was simple. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are some recently deceased people who try to get some new homeowners out of their New England house. It was simple and sweet.
There’s a plot about Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) who is now a famous medium psychic who can see ghosts and has her own TV show. She’s also alienated from her teenage daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), because of the show as well as the fact her father and Lydia’s husband has died. Yet, Lydia is unable to see him. Lydia is also dating a new man, Rory (Justin Theroux), who is also her producer.
There’s Deelia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara channeling more of Schitt$ Creek role of Moira Rose) as an avant-garde artist who finally has success but has become recently widowed herself as her husband, Charles, was killed in a shark attack. (Jeffrey Jones played him in the first movie. He has since been arrested, charged and convicted of child pornography and child sexual abuse. So, Warner Bros. learning their lesson after the Ezra Miller fallout probably refused for Burton to hire him.
Ergo, Charles’ death is shown in a stop-motion animation sequence as his whole head and upper chest area was bitten off. Mark Heenan is listed as the person to do Charles’ psychical body while Charlie Hopkinson produces the voice. So, Deelia and Lydia along with Rory and Astrid go to the fictional Winter River, Conn. to settle the affairs.
But Astrid is upset when Rory proposes to Lydia and takes off on her bicycle eventually crashing through a fence into a backyard where she meets teenager Jeremy Frazier (Arthur Conti) who she seems to have a connection is. But he has a secret that seems to be out of a totally different movie.
As for Betelgeuse himself, he has started an agency of “bio-exorcists” in the Netherworlds. But he is informed by Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), a B-movie action star who was killed on set and now thinks he’s a real detective that Betelgeuse’s ex-wife, Delores LaFerve (Monica Belluci) is searching for him. She was a soul-sucking occultist during the Black Plague era. We also learn how Betelgeuse died, which I won’t give away.
It’s a lot to take in especially for a movie that is only about 100 minutes including credits. Some of the jokes don’t fly as good as they did years ago, mainly because black comedy/horror has become more mainstream. You really just wonder if Burton thought all he had to do was assemble some of the cast together. There’s also a yadda-yadda-yadda in regards to why Adam and Barbara Maitland (Baldwin and Davis) are MIA from the house.
The movie also doesn’t help the reports and rumors that Burton is actually very racist. During one sequence, there’s a sequence involving a Soul Train that looks as cringeworthy as it’s sounds. Mainly it’s because a lot of things are fleshed out as well as they were in the first movie. The whole story with Jeremy and Astrid sounds like it’s going to be a huge deal but it’s over and done with before you know.
And we get another scene of everyone lip-synching to an older song, this time it’s “MacArthur Park.” This seems about as much of a ludicrous song as it has lyrics like, “Someone left the cake out in the rain.” I guess they were trying to catch the humor of the characters finding themselves doing the Calypso to Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat (Day-O).”
At least this is the only Burton movie where Danny DeVito hasn’t worn a top hat. And I liked the inclusion of Burns Gorman who plays the local clergy in Winter River and has a small scene with Dafoe. I’ve always though both actors have the same facial features and apparently I wasn’t the only one.
Burton has commented that this sequel took 36 years to make it to the screen and at 66, he’ll be over 100 if he lives that long for the third movie. Considering how disappointed people have been with this movie while it’s made almost half a billion at the box office, anything is possible. I suggest if they do make a third movie, which has to be titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, they look at what made the first one so good and this one so bad.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 