September 8, 2024
Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) has parlayed her ability to see and talk to ghosts into a career on television. She was in a romantic relationship with her sleazy exploitative manager Rory (Justin Theroux). One day, her stepmother Delia (Catherine O'Hara), now a notable sculptural artist, told Lydia that her father Charles had perished in a plane crash. They picked up Lydia's teen daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) en route back to Winter River, Connecticut.
This sequel comes 35 years after Tim Burton's original "Beetlejuice" (1988). That film was about Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis), a ghost couple who wanted to drive the annoying new residents -- the Deetz family (Jeffrey Jones, Catherine O'Hara, Winona Ryder) -- out of their former house. Unable to scare them away on their own, they desperately called on "bio-exorcist" Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) to do the job.
It was gratifying to see Keaton and O'Hara again as older versions of their characters, all of them as neurotic and over-the-top as ever. Ryder's mature Lydia was a delicate emotional wreck and pushover, an unexpected development for her character. The death of Charles Deetz was presented in the form of stop-motion animation not used elsewhere in the film. For the rest of the film, Charles was just a walking, talking "man" whose upper half had been chomped off. Sadly, the Maitlands, the representation of good in the first film, were not even mentioned anymore.
Jenna Ortega was expectedly a good fit as Astrid, which was really reminiscent of her breakthrough role as Wednesday Adams. Let's hope she does not get typecast only in these goth teenager roles. Astrid's love interest was Jeremy Frazier (Arthur Conti in his feature film debut), a charming neighborhood boy with odd and shy parents. Their subplot was quite well-written, as it will also involve the strained relationship of Astrid and her mother.
Three veteran actors also don macabre costumes and make-up for their guest roles. Monica Belluci played Delores, Betelgeuse's vindictive soul-sucking ex-wife whose chopped up body parts had been stapled back together. Willem Dafoe played Wolf Jackson, who used to be a B action movie star in life, now a ghost detective after he died in a filming accident. In a short scene in the first few minutes, Danny De Vito played a grumpy janitor in the afterlife.
Aside from his signature visuals and special effects updated with today's technology, director Burton also had a lot of fun with the pop music soundtrack. "Tragedy" by the Bee Gees played during an electrical accident. "Right Here Waiting" by Richard Marx was sung by Betelgeuse to Astrid while playing his guitar. The "Soul Train" theme was played while passengers for the train to the great beyond were gyrating. For the pièce de résistance, "MacArthur Park" by Richard Harris was played for a wedding, so we actually see the cake with the sweet green icing flowing down.
Although it seems that you can still thoroughly enjoy this new film even without knowing the first film, I think watching or re-watching it first will enhance the viewing experience. The sequel revisited so many things from the first film, such as the Handbook of the Recently Deceased, the scale model of the whole town in miniature in the attic, the red covered bridge, the Banana Boat Song, the shrunken-head man Bob, the desert with the sand worm, the red wedding gown. Those familiar with them will wax nostalgic. 8/10
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