Michael Keaton returning to his character after 36 years declares “the juice is loose” and just like that, the ghost with the most is back. For those wondering if Keaton’s bio-exorcist still had the juice to goose the audiences, certainly the numbers of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s opening week at the box office has left no doubt. Tim Burton’s long awaited sequel to his 1988 horror-comedy hit has bagged a cool $168 million its first week in theaters.
With the juice loose at the cineplex once more, and the fan turnout showing they were waiting for it, I would not be surprised if this is not the last time we here from Keaton’s ghastly, ghoulish gag machine. Plus, as many have stated on social media outlets, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the title begging to be used to cap off a perfect trilogy. Yeah, I know I said it three times and maybe I just spoke the trilogy into existence. But a third film is only worth the time if our current story was worth telling. So was it?
A Cute Film Addict Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Movie Review
Plot Synopsis: Over thirty years after her first encounter with Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is forced to team up with him to rescue her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega).
In 1988 director Tim Burton unleashed his second film to the public, a film that is both a masterpiece and now a cult classic. Beetlejuice put on full display an incredible pants-on-fire cartoonish performance from Michael Keaton in the titular role, crowned Winona Ryder as teenage goth queen of the time in her role as Lydia Deetz, and pronounced that director Burton was on the scene with his one-of-a-kind spooky filmmaking.
The smartly titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice seems to have given Burton new life and he uses it to get back to what he does best. Opening with a ghostly title sequence and a score from Danny Elfman, the camera once again swoops over the sleepy New England town of Winter River, Connecticut and the audience knows exactly where it is going. Once again, as it was in the original, the film is anchored by Lydia, who is now a “professional psychic mediator” with her own paranormal reality TV show called ‘Ghost House’ and she is dating slimy producer Rory portrayed by Justin Theroux. But the ghost with the most, Betelgeuse, is haunting her dreams, and soon it’s impossible to escape that strong sense of deja vu.
This feeling of nostalgia is one that spills over to the audience as well, but Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is not old hat, Burton does his best to carve out a relatively fresh story here. Sadly, this is also where the film struggles; the script spends a great deal of time introducing new characters and plot threads that it gets in a bit of a narrative rabbit hole.
New characters include teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), brilliantly inheriting the goth-queen crown from Ryder. There’s Jeremy (Authur Conti), the cute boy Astrid literally stumbles upon in Winter River. There’s Monica Bellucci’s Delores, who happens to be Betelgeuse’s ex-from-hell, enjoying a creatively brilliant limb-by-limb introduction. And my favorite new character is Willem Dafoe’s Wolf Jackson. Wolf is a former television star turned afterlife cop who is so ingeniously glorious in bringing the humor, I was left wanting more of the Wolf. All of the new characters are fun, but as I said before they do weigh the story down a little, especially with the tight runtime.
However, the movie does have a secret weapon. As soon as the Ghost with the Most is loose, all things start to fall into place. Keaton is full of energy as he bounces off the purgatorial walls with hilarious fervor and gleefully lifting everything around him. Overall, the film is at its best when it plays as a Tim Burton film and relishes in the ability to get weird. Examples include the flashes of B-movie brilliance the 1988 original was known for in the stop-motion animation sequence, some delightful shrunken-head prosthetic effects, and two extremely demented birth scenes producing a most ghoulish prosthetic baby that only Burton could have imagined. It’s the moments like these, when the film is at the most Burtonesque, that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice shines.
The Verdict: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is fun, but a little uneven. The film is at its best when the Burton shines through and Michael Keaton has never been more full of energy. Truly, the Juice is Loose.
A Cute Film Addictive Rating: 7.8/10
