“The juice is loose!”

Justin’s rating: I will be right here waiting for you

Justin’s review: Exactly a year ago, I watched Beetlejuice for only the second time in my life in order to review it. There, I rediscovered a movie that was as strange, imaginative, and original as they come — a tour of director Tim Burton’s odd psyche as he imagined what the afterlife would be. And despite the entertaining kids cartoon that ran from 1989 through 1991 and the heavily rumored sequel project of Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, this wasn’t so much a franchise as an extreme oddity. A relic of a very specific time with a very specific creator.

I guess it’s now a franchise, because here I am a year later reviewing Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the latest legacy sequel that Hollywood seems absolutely fixated on churning out even if they make no sense. The now-72-year-old Michael Keaton, 70-year-old Catherine O’Hara, and 52-year-old Winona Ryder were game to revisit this territory,* so here we go again!

Decades after the bizarre events of the first film, Lydia (Ryder) still has that goth attitude, a hit TV show, and the ability to see the dead. It’s probably not a good sign that Betelgeuse himself momentarily appears before she’s called home to her father’s funeral (shark attack, naturally) along with her mother Delia (O’Hara) and estranged daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega, pulled right off Tim Burton’s Wednesday series) who doesn’t believe in ghosts. Boy, is that girl in for an awakening.

Betelgeuse (Keaton) himself is working the underworld haunting call center with a bunch of those shrunken head dudes when he learns that his soul-sucking ex-wife Delores (Monica Bellucci) has reassembled herself and is out for revenge. Since she can make people “dead dead,” it’s a threat with some heft.

There’s a lot — a LOT — going on here. Lydia’s pushy boyfriend proposes to her, Astrid gets a love interest who happens to be a dead teenage boy, underworld denizens escape into the real world on Halloween, and Willem Defoe is an underworld detective (and former AC-TOR!) hot on the trail of Delores. Astrid’s crush pulls her into the underworld with the intent of exchanging souls, and Lydia pulls out her ace in the hole (beetlejuice beetlejuice beetlejuice) to get help rescuing her. Of course, Betelgeuse still wants to marry her and cannot be trusted for anything, but the buddy adventure must happen even so.

Cue a field trip down into the hereafter (Delia joins up, as she gets bit by snakes and dies). That was always my favorite part of the first movie, as I think Tim Burton should’ve been a haunted house designer rather than a filmmaker. The underworld is tilted in all senses, with the dead bearing the marks of their demise, bureaucracy moving slower than in real life, and a sense that anything can happen. It’s a gothic playground, a tribute to Hot Topic with all sorts of prosthetics and clever lighting.

Keaton’s age disappears into the heavy makeup and some very lively acting. It’s nice to see him return to comedy and one of his two most iconic roles (both from the ’80s, natch). Catherine O’Hara is an unexpected hoot-and-a-half as the unhinged artist. And Tim Burton’s imagination is still as zany as ever, doing all of the heavy lifting to overcome a creaky, stuffed plot.

I can’t think of many Burton movies that are tightly paced and narratively controlled, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice isn’t going to break that trend. It should’ve jettisoned about half of these subplots, but restraint and focus isn’t the order of the day. Rather, it’s unleashed excess, 30 years of ideas spraying everywhere with an unfettered cartoonish air.

But you know what? Derivative and cluttered as this may be, it’s still far more of a creative trip than most blockbusters these days. It also kept me smiling the whole way through. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice carries the Halloween spirit on the ’80s coattails — and is perhaps a sign that neither is over quite yet.

*But not Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Jeffrey Jones. Probably for obvious reasons. Jones does appear as a claymation figure, though. And in some pictures. And as a corpse with its head bit off.

Intermission!

• The darker, more blare-y version of the main theme is a delight
• “…along with their dog, Taco.” Taco likes to hang out on top of ceiling fans
• Lydia as a Ghost House host seems like such a perfect fit
• “This is the last time I ever dig pills out of a trash can for you.”
• CLAYMATION PLANE CRASH
• Oh man I love these underworld set designs
• They listen to Jimmy Buffet in the underworld
• Dead Danny DeVito as the janitor
• That’s an awful lot of staples to piece a body back together
• The bug running under Beetlejuice’s skin
• The cat lady *shivers*
• Weddings used to involve biting the heads off chickens
• Why is he speaking in subtitles? Just because. Go with it.
• The entire house is wearing a mourning shroud
• “Emotions processed.”
• “I guess the only thing bungee jumping today is love… and that chord just snapped.”
• Bob as the decoy
• Capture your primal scream!
• “Oh God it’s you, I thought a moose was about to attack me.”
• Handbook for the Recently Deceased
• “Fair warning, this is going to sound batshit crazy. Are you OK with that?”
• BEETLEJUICE BABY EW
• The burned Christmas Santa with the presents
• Charles’ tombstone is shaped like a shark fin
• All of the shrunken head guys rushing to go into the real world… on Halloween
• The Soul Train is fuuuuunky
• The piranha makeup is amazing
• Poor, poor Bob
• Ha all the influencers getting sucked into their phones