And I’ll never have that recipe again

Movie Review
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Directed by Tim Burton

HOW to do a proper sequel? It used to be a silly question, but in this age of endless remakes, reboots, recycling of stories in one form or another, it’s almost become a major artistic question, if art can or has ever been considered major — was there a time in the 1960s and ’70s, or were we just fooling ourselves?

Do you do the same film again but with a bigger budget, perhaps more elaborate set pieces, on occasion turning expectations against an audience in an effective “gotcha!” moment? Robert Rodriguez did something like that to El Mariachi, though Desperado for all its energy was less gritty and less compact hence a less satisfying recreation; Sam Raimi triumphed with Evil Dead 2 by adding more overt humor, sometimes straying into the surreal, then tying it all into a time-looping mythology (and much as I love maybe 80% of Army of Darkness including the final punchline, he really should have stopped with the second film). Perversely I’m of the school of thought that Gus Van Sant hit a home run with his shot-for-shot remake of Psycho — if you’re going to do an unembarrassed cash grab don’t go halfhearted, go all the way (actually I suspect Van Sant had a particular reason for doing this and if you’re curious, check out Jorge Luis Borge’s Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote).

Do you go in an entirely different direction the way Exorcist 2: The Heretic did, turning the intimate near-documentary realism of the first film into soaring theological science fiction (I’m also of the school of thought that Boorman’s sequel improved on Friedkin, so — sue me and everyone else who thinks so, all five of us?)? Or do what James Whale did, hold out for years for a bigger budget so he could turn Bride of Frankenstein into tongue-in-cheek horror comedy? I cannot lie, I’m partial to this second camp — seize the chance to draw audiences into theaters expecting more of the same, then blindside them with something crazy.

But Tim Burton isn’t exactly a skilled storyteller; he works in spurts and on inspiration, and when the spurts are frequent enough and the inspiration inspired enough he can give us the finale in Batman Returns where Catwoman improvises on a 19^th century children’s poem while cracking a whip on a cowering billionaire, or the moment when Delia Deetz’s dinner audience waits for her to say something witty and Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O” comes out of her mouth. You don’t come to a Burton film looking for consistent characterization or realistic emotional development (though I submit Burton and screenwriter Daniel Waters did a fair job with Danny DeVito’s Penguin and, above all, Michelle Peiffer’s Catwoman); you do come for the unspoken pleasure of trying to guess when the gliding overhead shots of the town of Winter River has turned into a mindbendingly detailed tabletop model, or suss out how each afterlife character meets his often violent end from the hilariously gruesome prosthetics (Willem Dafoe’s Det. Wolf Jackson looks as if he had an unfortunate encounter with a deli meat slicer), or revel in the gloriously low-tech special effects (brace yourself when Beetlejuice announces he’s going to spill his guts). “Day-O” shouldn’t have worked when Burton used it in the first film; moving the recall of that moment to its proper place in the sequel — the finale — shouldn’t work either, especially since we’re looking for it, but when you hear Richard Harris’ otherworldly vocal stylings boom in that chapel, the sounds unaccountably form a perfect fit with Burton’s vision of Beetlejuice’s notion of a shotgun wedding.

So, Burton takes the first approach — but let us pause for a digression.

Popular thinking is that after a string of hits — Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman (Batman Returns made money but was deemed so bizarre and inappropriate for children that Warner Studios backed out of their deal to have the filmmaker continue the franchise) — Burton peaked with his first-ever biopic Ed Wood (featuring an oddly winning performance by Johnny Depp) and has been only occasionally interesting since. I disagree; I thought Mars Attacks! was a brilliant subversion of apocalyptic alien-invasion movies, thought Planet of the Apes triumphed because Burton managed to make then-girlfriend Helena Bonham-Carter totally desirable in full ape makeup; thought Alice in Wonderland was an improvement on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (for one, the actors play up the absurdity inherent in the fantasy genre); thought Dark Shadows was a droll family comedy; thought Charlie and the Chocolate Factory pushed too many buttons because Johnny Depp was channeling Michael Jackson at his most pedo; thought Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was a more visually interesting sendup of the X-Men and Harry Potter movies. I even preferred Burton’s remake of Dumbo to the Disney original — a moment before you pull out your pitchforks: the film was less sentimental, and the amusement park looked more fun than Disneyland (though I’d take out a large life insurance policy first before visiting), and Burton’s staging of “Baby Mine” was, in my view, superior.

Returning to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

I always thought Justin Theroux was never properly credited for the comedy he injected into The Leftovers; as Lydia’s oily boyfriend Rory he shifts that comic dexterity into high gear, manipulating events (and Lydia) to a massive wedding event that promptly slides sideways (not a fan of the cellphone effect though — one of the instances where Burton went full digital and I for one don’t appreciate it).  Catherine O’Hara is as always sui generis — her bright blue eyes contain a self-absorbed insanity maybe only Gene Wilder can match. Jeffrey Jones understandably can’t return as Charles Deetz in person, but Burton’s solution is inventive enough to become the film’s best running (and mumbling, and spurting) gag. Willem Dafoe, Burn Gorman, and Danny Devito shine in their respective deceptively brief roles (y’know what they say, there are no small parts — in this picture I’d add there are no small actors either). Jenna Ortega cleverly piggybacks off her characterization of Wednesday in the Netflix show — to paraphrase what someone once said, most of the acting is in the casting.

Winona Ryder is somehow moving as Lydia Deetz. I thought she was lovely but shallow in the first film; here she looks exhausted, uncertain, totally dried out — and I wanted to weep for what the years have done to her, as a character and in real life. But she wins me over; somehow she manages to scramble up on her feet and make some hard decisions and is even willing to live up to the consequences (be damned and all). And in the end, when she flashes us a brief smile, suddenly it’s that beautiful young Lydia we remember from all those years ago. We loved her, we were in love with her, but didn’t really believe her as a person; Ryder this time around helps us find that belief.

As Dolores, Monica Bellucci is a comic force of nature, both hilarious and horrifying as she stalks the hallways of the afterlife seeking her lost beloved (can you imagine her in a Dario Argento giallo?). As that lost beloved, Michael Keaton proves at the ripe old age of 73 that he still has the most — in The Flash he put on the batsuit showing us the years that passed and what it cost him; here he takes up a role he hasn’t played in decades and gives it the unbelievable energy it demands, as if he’d only stepped out for a bathroom break. 

This is easily Burton’s best work in years — not that his storytelling skills are any sharper, or his powers of characterization any more consistent, but the eccentric comic timing and demented set pieces are back (the visual texture has always been there, but this time, thank goodness, with minimal digital interference). More, there’s a tone — an unflinching look at body mutilation and bloodletting, with ax or knife or shark bite — that he seemed to have picked up somewhere during his years of filmmaking (while making Sweeney Todd, maybe?). Burton may have made Helena Bonham Carter’s ape sexy but here he manages to make Monica Bellucci’s session with a staple gun unabashedly erotic, the body-assembling equivalent of a striptease (a pierce-tease?). This is a darker Burton, a more macabre Burton, but a no less enjoyable Burton for all that — when Keaton, after maybe 50 minutes of audience anticipation, finally emerges from the split-open model tabletop in full ghoul getup (pallid skin, mold-green neck, rotting teeth and all), looks at the camera and quietly declares: “the ’Juice is loose” — you know exactly how he feels, and wonder if Burton’s feeling the same way too.