Ghosts don’t age, but films certainly do. So the question is, can Tim Burton revive the mix of macabre, maniacal and comical that made his 1988 Beetlejuice a cult classic?
It’s certainly an achievement that 36 years later, the director who was then onto just his second feature but now has several similarly themed films in his resume, has assembled three from the original cast for a sequel that has long been in the making. But while saying Beetlejuice thrice can summon up the namesake demon – and much else – in the film, deploying two of them in the title, getting Keaton, Ryder and O’Hara to reprise their roles, and securing many more celebrities to put in thankless appearances doesn’t lend the story any extra “juice”.
You can’t blame Keaton, who thanks to the make-up covering his face, can be revived to look exactly the same. Ryder’s Lydia, the goth girl from the original who could see ghosts, is now a single mother to teenager Astrid (Ortega). In fact, Astrid is exactly the age that Lydia was when she discovered her unique talents in the first film. Which here, or there in the netherworld, is a coincidence that is never coincidental.
The two along with Lydia’s stepmother Delia (O’Hara) are back at the house where it all began to mark the recent passing of Lydia’s father. While Delia still remains a self-obsessed, barely talented “artist”, who sees an opportunity to “unpack the art of sorrow” in her husband’s death, she and Lydia are now settled into a more affable relationship.
ALSO READ | Visfot movie review: Fardeen Khan, Riteish Deshmukh deliver been-there, seen-it film
As teens are wont to do, Astrid does not believe her mother is all that she claims to be – the TV shows and fame which have come the ghost whisperer Lydia’s way in all the intervening 30-plus years notwithstanding. This lasts till, that is, Astrid meets a cute boy (Conti) who is not really all he claims to be. (The two teens spout Dostoevsky, so who is to what’s real and fake?)
Theroux plays Lydia’s selfish manager-cum-boyfriend who is arm-twisting her into marrying him. Bellucci plays Delores, the ex-wife of Beetlejuice (Keaton), who in a truly delightful scene staples her different body parts together to return to her old “soul-sucking” glory and seek revenge from him. Dafoe is an actor who played small cop roles when alive and now heads ‘Afterlife Crime Unit’ in death, and is hunting for Delores. Even Danny DeVito shows up for a few brief moments, to drink a morbid liquid and die.
With so many people around, there is not much of Beetlejuice around. And that is both this sequel’s loss and a possible advantage it doesn’t make any use of. Keaton slithers easily back into the skin of the role he made famous, even if Beetlejuice is now more silly than sinister. But while he livens up the screen, having Ryder there and seeing her nice and easy interactions with her daughter, makes one wish that one saw more of her.
Where the film has come a long way from 1988 is taming Beetlejuice’s harassing behaviour towards women, which wouldn’t do now. Instead, it takes several swipes at the constraints of political correctness – Theroux’s Rory is a joke in his resolve at being “a non-feminine muscular archetype”, and the film has Astrid call him out for his “new-age, over-emotional… yoga retreat bullshit”.
And, as Delia notes rolling her eyes, carrots have replaced candy as Halloween treats!
The afterlife, in comparison, is comfortingly familiar – minus a ghost or a limb and two from 1988.
Director: Tim Burton
Movie cast: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe, Arthur Conti
Rating: 2.5
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
