‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Overdoes It

There’s a terrific, much shorter film at the center of this messy sequel.

I’ve never related to a facial expression more in my life.

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Beetlejuice is a weird fucking movie, if you think about it. Between the puppetry, the Harry Belafonte, and the Michael Keaton of it all, it’s amazing this film ever got made, even if it was the Peak Tim Burton Era¹. Somehow, it all worked, and the result is a delightful, demented little number that somehow pulls all those weird threads together into a story that works. Much of the film’s success rides on the actors: Keaton is brilliant in the role of a trickster demon who wants to marry Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) so he can remain in the mortal realm, Ryder is terrific as the acerbic and angsty teenage girl, and Catherine O’Hara is her usual excellent self as Lydia’s stepmother, Delia. And Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis² bring a sweet sense of fun to the Maitlands, a happy young couple who die and haunt the house Lydia and Delia move into, kicking off the events of the film.

Did we need a sequel? Probably not, unless you count the rights’ holders need for some more money³. Like almost all sequels, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice just extends a story that had already ended, and a lot of it is just dropping references to the original so we can all point and say “I get that reference!” Yes, yes, there’s Belafonte at the funeral for Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones in the original, memory-holed due to being a deeply gross man), sure, sure, there’s the model of the town and look! There’s Bob, victim of the head-shrinker!

None of it is particularly clever⁴. Sequels often have to spend some time establishing a connection to the original and mimicking what could be a dated look and sensibility (Nearly 40 years separates these two movies—1988 was a long, long time ago, and I am here to tell you in a Crotchety Old Man voice that it was like a whole different world back, then, man⁵). But you can do that with a little verve and creativity, or you can just drop in visual cues like you’re getting a chore over with, which is the way Beetlejuice Beetlejuice chooses.

But there are hints at something better, something more interesting. At close to two hours long, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has a lot of fat that could be cut, and if you squint, there’s a tighter, more interesting movie buried under all that fan service⁶.

Someone Left The Cake Out In The Rain

More films should have puppeteer dance routines, IMHO.

The basic plot of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a sturdy enough one: Lydia’s daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega) doesn’t believe her mother can see ghosts, and hates her relationship with her boyfriend (soon fiance), Rory (Justin Theroux), who is quite obviously a terrible person. Fleeing the house, she crashes into a back yard and meets Jeremy (Arthur Conti), a cute boy who turns out to be a ghost. Jeremy asks Astrid to help him come back to life, and dangles the chance to meet her long-dead father in the afterlife if she helps—but Jeremy is actually quite the evil spirit, and bringing him back to life will require Astrid to die. Desperate to save her daughter, Lydia reluctantly contacts Beetlejuice (Keaton) for assistance.

There’s more to it, but that’s the basic throughline, and it’s perfectly workable to get us back into Beetlejuice’s demented orbit. Beetlejuice has been running a call center in the afterlife staffed by shrunken-head men led by Bob, the victims of, well, a head-shrinker. And when the prankster demon breaks into the afterlife with Lydia to retrieve Astrid, the shrunken-head men escape into the mortal realm, and for approximately thirty seconds of screen time you get the scent of a more interesting third act, one where the weird and wild undead invade the real world on Halloween and cause all kinds of mayhem⁷. The shots of the shrunken-head men racing around unnoticed because of the holiday are great—and very brief. The movie can’t wait to get past this potentially interesting bit and back to reheating a few jokes from the first film⁸.

Later, when Beetlejuice has saved the day and demands payment in the form of Lydia’s hand in marriage, there’s a delightfully endless scene where the demon forces everyone to sing “MacArthur Park⁹” while he slow dances in the air with Lydia, an enormous cake with green icing (of course) crashing into the church. The sheer length of this scene makes it into an absurd set piece as Beetlejuice uses his godlike powers to stifle any attempts to stop the wedding, and really leans into the genuine weirdness of the character and the premise instead of just listing “see what I did there” callbacks. Beetlejuice is, after all, a trickster demon.

I Think It Was Dostoevsky Who Said Later, Fucker!

Does any other entertainer have more stored-up goodwill than Michael Keaton?

These little flashes in the midst of a much less interesting story demonstrate a different approach to the sequel, which just makes the rest of the film that much more disappointing. There’s a version that cuts back on the callback honkery and just tells the core story, with a lot more room for inventive bits of new business instead of slightly amusing bits of retread business. The performances are all terrific, and the film is fun, but it’s tough to see flashes of what might have been¹⁰.

Then again, no one is paying your Faithful Writer here millions to make (or remake) big-budget films, so what the hell do I know¹¹. I’ll tell you what I know: All the lyrics to “MacArthur Park,” and I am the poorer for it.

NEXT WEEK: Shrinking shows its seams.

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1. Peak Tim Burton will always be his cameo in Singles.

2. Nothing evokes the late 1980s and early 1990s like “Starring Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis.” Unless it’s wine coolers on a Jersey City street corner, man that will always be the 1990s for me.

3. Being a rights holder myself, I understand: That’s why I just signed a deal for Avery Cates jock straps.

4. Like recognize like, I suppose. I haven’t been particularly clever since 7th grade.

5. Most notable difference: I was considered part of the desirable advertising demographic back then and everything seemed designed just for me! IT WAS GREAT!

6. Just as there’s a tighter, more interesting Jeff buried under all this whiskey.

7. The lo-fi costuming of the shrunken head men makes this joke: They look like guys wearing shrunken heads on top of their own normal size heads, and this makes their hijinx extra hilarious.

8. A lot of Hollywood movies can be described that way: They can’t wait to get away from any accidentally interesting bits that fall out of their scripts.

9. Screw Sabrina Carpenter, we used to live in a world where a weird-ass song like MacArthur Park, sung by a bleary-eyed drunken Irish actor, was a hit song. We used to be a serious civilization.

10. Increasingly, this applies to my own life as well.

11. I know this: Insurance is a scam, cats are tiny, furry demons, and buying pants one size too large is The Way.