Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder

Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a well crafted and witty sequel that captures the anarchic impulses of the original. Burton's best work has always allied itself with the fringy weirdos and artsy outsiders of society and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice's script, by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, does a good job seizing upon this strain of his work. Winona Ryder is back and her character has grown up, fittingly, to become a podcaster on supernatural subjects. Catherine O'Hara also returns. Her character has become a performance artist which enable Burton to satirize the broad target that is the modern art world. New additions to the Beetlejuice world are mostly here as objects of parody. Willem Dafoe as an supernatural cop lampoons Hollywood vanity while Justin Theroux gives the film's best performance as a creepy boyfriend with new age trappings. Monica Bellucci, the latest in a long line of Burton's amours to figure in his work, is given little to do as Beetlejuice's vengeful ex-spouse.

Jeffrey Jones, who played Ryder's father in the original, has been mostly persona non grata in Hollywood since his conviction for child pornography. The script writers solved this conundrum by killing off his character. When Jones character does appear it is in a stop motion animation sequence or as a headless corpse. Michael Keaton once again perfectly embodies the raging id of the titular character. As in the original, a little of Keaton goes a long way. The team behind this production realize this and do a good job maximizing his limited appearances. Jenna Ortega, the star of Burton's Wednesday, appears as Ryder's daughter. The conflicts between mother and daughter here feel perfunctory, but I did enjoy Ortega's chemistry with romantic interest Arthur Conti. Presenting the awkward crush of  young love has been one of Burton's fortes.

Jenna Ortega

As an artist, Burton is hampered by a limited and somewhat juvenile worldview. His gentle satire of suburban conformity lacks the bite of someone like Vincent Minelli, Douglas Sirk or even John Waters. However, he is one of the preeminent Hollywood craftsman of his generation. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice looks great whether utilizing CGI, practical effects or miniatures. At 97 minutes in length, not counting the fifteen minutes or so of the endless technical end credits, this film is well paced and lacks the bloat of most Hollywood sequels. I appreciated the shout out to Mario Bava and, even more, the appropriation of Bava's style in a black and white sequence that sheds light on Beetlejuice's origin. I also dug Burton's tongue in cheek use of such cultural claptrap as Jimmy Webb's "MacArthur Park" which I have been unable to banish from my brain since 1967. The song seems to express the dilemma of any script writer tackling the assignment of a sequel: the fear that "...I'll never find that recipe again." All in all, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is Burton's best concoction since Dark Shadows.