Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
It’s hard to believe that the original Beetlejuice, released in 1988, is 36 years old, even harder to believe that Michael Keaton just turned 73, and even harder than that to believe it took this long for a sequel to arrive. With any film that grosses $75 million (on a budget of $15 million) you would think a sequel would be fast and inevitable, but, save for a Saturday morning animated series, Beetlejuice simply disappeared as if someone had uttered his name three times in a row.
And yet somehow, after watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, this feels like the right era for the story to continue. In the sequel, which takes place in modern times, everyone has moved up a generation. Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara) is now a grandmother (and a widow); Lydia Deetz (Wynona Ryder) is also a widow and the host of her own popular paranormal television show; Astrid (Jenna Ortega) is the new gotherific teen, completing the trifecta.
(And Beetlejuice is still Beetlejuice.)
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t just have a plot, it has like four. First is the Deetz family dealing with the loss of their patriarch, Charles Deetz. (In the original film Charles was portrayed by Jeffrey Jones, who has since registered as a sex offender and retired from Hollywood, thus the absence of his character from the film.) We also have multiple storylines with Lydia, including her relationship with Rory (her business manager), and Astrid, her daughter. There’s a major plot line with Astrid who meets a boy with a dark past, and then there’s Beetlejuice, who’s being pursued by his former wife. Even in the afterlife, stalkers be stalkin’. The problem with all these storylines is that often they have the same weight. The film isn’t from any one person’s point of view — it’s from all of theirs, including Beetlejuice’s.
One thing I really liked about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that it doesn’t feel like a reboot or a reimagining. This is a true sequel, and the film is tied both visually and sonically to the original . Danny Elfman provides a similar but new soundtrack, and the look of the world, both on earth and in the afterlife, feels the same. In a film like this it would have been easy for them to go overboard with new CGI tricks and updates, but save for one scene early on in the film, the majority of the effects are done practically. There’s some claymation stuff, and one scene that was probably done with CGI but stylized to look like it was stop motion. Save for that one long CGI scene, you could watch both films back to back and, for the most part, think they were from the same era.
Winona Ryder does a good job of capturing the spirit (no pun intended) of Lydia and Jenna Ortega, who looks like a young Winona Ryder, has no trouble pulling off the angsty teen role. Catherine O’Hara, without Jeffrey Jones working as a straight man by her side, often comes off more like Moira from Schitt’s Creek than Delia. Even at 73, Michael Keaton IS Beetlejuice. Justin Theroux plays Rory as an over the top drama queen, and there are other cameos I won’t spoil. Astrid’s boyfriend Jeremy is played by newcomer Arthur Conti, who I suspect was hired only because Finn Wolfhard was busy filming the final season of Stranger Things.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will never be the classic the original was, but it doesn’t tarnish the original, either. It’s worth revisiting some old friends for a while every now and then.