The original Beetlejuice, now 36 years old and easy to stream, is a good mood-setter for this legacy sequel which plays on the fact a generation has passed, at least among the living.
In 1988 Tim Burton’s cinematic anarchy was on display during the dinner party scene when the pretentious guests are seized by fun-loving demons who make them sing and dance to Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat (Day-O).
Burton’s genius, probably too risky to pull off now, was to make uptight New Yorkers calypso to a call-and-response Jamaican work song dripping with colonialism.
The scene was the highlight of the first and a strain of similar musical mayhem, again in collaboration with composer Danny Elfman, helps rescue the second. The wedding scene between the re-summoned Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) and Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) channels the same free-spirited anarchy as the couple float on high to the florid banality of MacArthur Park (Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain).
Thirty years have passed and Lydia, the young goth who saw ghosts in the attic, is now a television psychic with all the moves, none of them real. She is also the mother of Astrid (perfectly cast Jenna Ortega from Wednesday) and a widow whose husband, a naturalist, died in Brazil. And she is about to marry a total shyster, Rory (Justin Theroux) who wants to cash in on her fame.
There are multiple strands, some of which intersect and a few that miss.
Astrid meets a nice young man and they bond over a shared love of Tolstoy. She thinks she has found a soulmate only to be tricked by him – and she quickly needs saving.
Lydia has avoided thrice calling the name of Beetlejuice for 30 years and isn’t keen to do so now but will do anything to save her child. In yet another sidebar, the revived Beetlejuice is being stalked by his soul-sucking ex-wife, Delores (the magnificent Monica Bellucci), resurrected thanks to a power surge and some staples, and on his track. And it’s Halloween.
Obviously, we aren’t here for the plot, which in the original revolved around amiable ghosts in the house summoning Beetlejuice to get rid of the uppity tenants.
It was Tim Burton’s breakthrough film with its other-worldly playfulness and showed his willingness to inject comedy and emotion into the milieu of ghosts and misfits. Two years later he made Edward Scissorhands, starring Johnny Depp as the mechanical boy whose hands were scissors.
Over the years Burton has finessed techniques so the film looks magnificent with a soundtrack, curated by Elfman, that goes from jokey ghoulishness to serious rock (My Chemical Romance) and a reprise of Banana Boat (Day-O) sung by a graveside choir.
If only the characters were all as good as Willem Dafoe who plays a cop, Wolf Jackson, policing the afterlife with half his skull blown off. He understood the assignment and turns in a very funny performance spoofing the worst of the old cop shows and their inflated mannerisms.
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Comic goddess Catherine O’Hara is back as Lydia’s mother Delia Deetz, the sculptress with high self-regard and not much talent. Her performance in the first was a satirical send-up of vapid artists and no wonder the ghosts wanted her gone.
Since then, she has built a stellar career around silliness and satire, from Best in Show to the magnificent Moira from Schitt’s Creek so what a shame she has so little to play with here.
For all its faults and the fact that it might have been more, the film is still quirky, breezy and good to look at – and the Soul Train sequence is inspired.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in cinemas now
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