Now THIS is the way to deliver a sequel nearly 40 years after the original. Tim Burton's BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE is a visual treat, a laugh out loud comedy and a fast paced adventure on both sides of the living.
It also manages to pack in wall-to-wall hilarious songs that elevate the fun far beyond Harry Belafonte's "Day-O".
It's many years since the first film and the story reflects it.
Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) has turned her ability to see ghosts into Reality TV stardom, with her fawning producer/boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux) hovering nearby at all times.
Her mother Delia (a perfect Catherine O'Hara) is a famous artist, playing her eccentricities to the hilt with gallery shows that take self-obsession to another level.
Lydia's daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) is surviving a girls boarding school in the face of all the popular girls that constantly harass her about her family history. She's a non-believer and rebellious as hell.
Meanwhile, demon Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton, who hasn't lost a sidestep) pines away for Lydia in the afterlife while his ex-wife, the soul sucking evil Delores (Monica Bellucci) staples herself back together and begins a quest of vengeance against the man who cut her into pieces, Beetlejuice!
Burton pops back and forth between the Deetz's on Earth and Beetlejuice and his team in the suspiciously 70's looking office building of the Afterlife. Burton and his design team are in absolute top form, mixing up stop motion, just a bit of CGI, mostly old fashioned practical efforts and a true sense of fun into a seamless mix of fan service to those that love the original 1988 film and wholly new directions for the characters.
Willem Dafoe keeps popping up as an actor who doesn't quite seem to grasp that he's dead, playing the same cool detective role that he did when he was alive in Hollywood. The fact that half his skull is exposed doesn't seem to slow him down.
Arthur Conti (House of the Dragon) is also good as Jeremy, a neighbor kid that has a "meet cute" with Astrid. Just when you think there's going to be a young adult style romance in the film, Burton reminds you who he is and spins that into a wild & crazy direction that really pays off.
Has there ever been a more in-the-pocket cool blast of a Burton sequence than his vision of the Soul Train to the Great Beyond, loaded with bell bottomed dancers from the 70's, dancing wildly to Donna Summer and The Bee Gees as a Don Cornelius lookalike serves as a booming bass voice narrator to the ever after?
You couldn't get the smile off my face.
Keaton is obviously thrilled to be back in one of his most famous roles and makes every moment count. I would have liked to have seen him have more screen time, but that's just a testament to his manic, perfectly delivery performance.
The finale's Midnight Halloween wedding ceremony with a giant cake spinning through the air as Richard Harris' strained vocals on "MacArthur Park" drone on endlessly about someone leaving "the cake out in the rain and all the sweet green icing raining down" is inspired lunacy.
It's difficult to deliver a sequel nearly four decades after a blockbuster original and sell a multi generational story. So many fail, but Burton blows it up into supernatural heights with BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE.
Someone say it three times again in another ten years, so we can see what else Burton has up his sleeve. With this, his twentieth film as a director, he proves that he's still capable of delivering inspired, off-kilter fun.
The juice is loose and earns an A.
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