Review: ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ (2024)
A few too many ideas overburden this rudderless sequel
Almost thirty years since the beloved 1988 original, sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice arrives with a lot to live up to. Fortunately, much of the original personnel have returned: Tim Burton directs Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara, with music once again by longtime Burton collaborator Danny Elfman. The screenplay comes from ‘Wednesday’ writers and creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who bring with them the series’ star Jenna Ortega.
In the intervening years since the Deetz’s first encounter with Beetlejuice (Keaton), Lydia (Ryder) has become a minor celebrity using her medium abilities hosting the TV talk show “Ghost House With Lydia Deetz.” The show is produced by Rory (a hilarious Justin Theroux), her pretentious and doting partner who might be a little more eager about their relationship than she is. Her past continues to haunt her (literally), leaving her anxious and distant.
Lydia and her daughter Astrid (Ortega), who bears a similarly gloomy outlook on life and parents as a younger Lydia, are reunited with her mother Delia (O’Hara) when they receive word that Lydia’s father Charles has died, returning them to the house in Winter River where the events of the first film took place. Delia’s art career has blossomed, and her current museum installation is one of the strongest gags in the film.
Meanwhile, in the afterlife, Beetlejuice’s bioexorcism business is humming along, when he learns that Delores (Monica Bellucci), a powerful demon from his past, has been revived and is looking for him. As he plots to escape Delores, Lydia begins to have fleeting hallucinations of his presence, portending his return.
All of this would be plenty of material for a sequel, but, to its detriment, the film continues to bulk up the plot. There’s Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson, a dead TV cop drama actor leading an investigation into Dolores in the afterlife; Arthur Conti as Jeremy, the cute, intellectual boy next door with a secret; a gratuitous Danny DeVito; and several big, splashy musical sequences.
On one hand, you kind of can’t blame the filmmakers for wanting to have as much fun as possible with what feels likely to be the last chance to make a Beetlejuice movie, and it certainly wouldn’t be fair to expect Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to hew too closely to the structure of its predecessor — that would be a missed opportunity. But on the other hand, the film is trying to do too many things at once. There are enough ideas here for two sequels, and the whole thing topples under its own indulgent weight.
It comes as a surprise to many to learn that Michael Keaton has only seventeen minutes of screen time in the original Beetlejuice, and the character isn’t properly introduced until halfway through the film. It’s partly this restraint that makes the character so compelling — even Keaton himself insisted of the sequel, “You can’t load it up with Beetlejuice, that’ll kill it.” And yet, it does feel a bit loaded up with Beetlejuice, even filling in some lore that might have been better left unaddressed.
Michael Keaton perfectly reprises his role as though virtually no time has passed at all, and Catherine O’Hara is delightfully more prominent, hilarious as always. Winona Ryder’s Lydia is too preoccupied emoting agitation to feel as fleshed-out as one might hope, and Jenna Ortega is forgettable as Astrid, with a rushed and flat delivery, mostly a bystander to the events of the film.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a mostly respectful follow-up that, while not outright sullying the franchise, doesn’t fully earn its place. There’s a lot of fat that could have been cut, putting a greater focus on the relationships of the characters we know and keeping the film’s namesake only lurking in the background where he belongs.
