The simple fact that an old movie is beloved, fondly remembered, or the object of cult fascination does not necessarily mean it has lasting cultural currency. After all, we live among a tidal wave of so-called content that recycles the cinematic highlights and lowlights of the 1980s, but so many of these reboots and rehashes cease to have meaning in a contemporary context. For example, the original Ghostbusters, from 1984, was a peppy brief on behalf of the Reagan-era pro-capitalist, anti-regulatory ethos, but the new films in the franchise have been stripped of this DNA : They are, merely, exercises in sentimental nostalgia.
Yet Tim Burton’s schizoid netherworld farce Beetlejuice is that ’80s-era entertainment that was certainly sharp and shapely in its own time but looks downright tailor-made for ours. The film’s arch, postmodern, non-sequitur-dependent sense of humor is essentially the default style of most modern screen comedy , and its indulgence in an amalgamation of autumnal devilry and occult mysticism is reflected in everything from the popularity of Netflix’ s Stranger Things to the ubiquity of pumpkin-spice seasoning. Want to bet that most audiences are more familiar with the Handbook for the Recently Deceased than the Psalms?
This is not an inspiring or edifying state of affairs, but, on the plus side, it gives the new sequel to the film some claim to legitimacy. They say that history is written by the winners, and the existence of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice proves that sequels are made by the winners, too: This is a film that takes for granted its predecessor’s immense influence on pop culture and, in fact, folds said influence into its very premise: Having kind of, sort of recovered from her interaction with Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice, the doleful goth-lite adolescent Lydia Deetz has become the doleful goth-lite 50-something Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), the host of, and chief psychic on, a reality TV series called Ghost House — a superbly sly parody of the panoply of supernatural investigative shows that populate the likes of the Travel Channel most weeknights. “I don’t know what I’m going to find behind this door,” Ryder says in her character’s signature unhappy mutter.
In the first Beetlejuice, Ryder’s Deetz was simply the wittiest performer in a rich cast of oddballs that included Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, and Catherine O’Hara. But, besides Ryder and Keaton, only O’Hara logs a return appearance, which leaves Ryder with essentially the starring, if not the title, role. This change in focus means that Deetz must become active, or at least acted upon, in the drama: In the earlier film, the character’s grimness was presented as an amusing affectation. But in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, she is given ample reasons to be distressed: Lydia’s father Charles has lost his life to the jaws of a shark in an episode depicted entirely in amusing but twee stop-motion animation. (The film is a bit too eager to prove its lack of reliance on computer-generated effects.)
Predictably, Charles’s demise is greeted as an occasion for art-making by Lydia’s self-styled artiste stepmother Delia (O’Hara), and as confirmation of life’s essential meaninglessness by Lydia’s daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who shares her mother’s glumness but declines to channel it into the supernatural. Providing Lydia with an excuse for her sour disposition, beyond teenage moodiness, diminishes the character’s comic power, but credit screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar for at least creating a semi-plausible pretext for the return of Keaton’s unruly demon Beetlejuice: Upon Charles’s death, Lydia and Astrid decamp to the same ghastly renovated house in Vermont that was the site of the original materialization of the undead Beetlejuice, who, then and now, is a poorly groomed, shabbily dressed “bio-exorcist” mandated with scaring the wits out of the living.
Ostensibly, Beetlejuice seeks Lydia’s company anew while in flight from a past paramour-turned-“soul-sucker” (Monica Bellucci), while Lydia seeks Beetlejuice’s assistance in extricating Astrid from a dangerous dalliance with the spirit world courtesy of a nefarious ghost, Jeremy (Arthur Conti).
Somehow, this mutual dependency results in planned nuptials between Beetlejuice and Lydia — the same bizarre denouement as the earlier movie. Despite the elaborate setup, though, the character has always served essentially the same function as Groucho Marx in the classic Marx Brothers comedies of the 1930s: not to advance any perceptible plot or embody any particular theme, but to destabilize, sabotage, and otherwise undermine the action.
Frankly, it is impossible to play even a funny scene straight opposite Keaton, who effortlessly summons the same growling voice, snarling countenance, and anarchic disposition he had in the first movie. Even in the netherworld in which he operates, Beetlejuice is the most high-spirited of spirits: a shameless narcissist and eager double-dealer who is infinitely more engaging than the other ghouls roaming an afterlife that, in Burton’s conception, is essentially a bureaucratic quagmire. (Representative of the dullness of the undead is a Drano-guzzling janitor played by Danny DeVito.)
All of this works pretty well. Keaton performs with the same gleeful hamminess he exhibited in the first film, which was made prior to his turn as Batman and brush with international stardom. Among the other veterans, Ryder plausibly incarnates a mature version of Lydia, and O’Hara credibly suggests an unchanged version of the conceited Delia. As the latest in a long line of young actresses whose shtick is to act as drolly unimpressed as possible — including Christina Ricci, Selena Gomez, and, once, Ryder herself — Ortega acquits herself nicely. Justin Theroux, as Lydia’s touchy-feely manager and frustrated suitor, generally gets the best lines: “If you ever need to process any emotions, I’m here for you,” he tells Astrid as she mourns her grandfather.
It would be fair to say that Burton orchestrates the proceedings with an eye to pleasing fans of the earlier film — at Charles’s funeral, “Day-O (Banana Boat Song)” is rather gratuitously performed by a choir — but that would be to understate his artistic integrity, such as it is: From Edward Scissorhands to Ed Wood, from Sleepy Hollow to the Beetlejuice series, few filmmakers in modern times have ever seemed so single-mindedly committed to a single aesthetic as Burton. Even here, his style must be seen as a form of personal expression rather than fan service: Burton seems genuinely to thrill to ghoulish sights, including skeletonized office workers answering phones and, most morosely, an infant variant of the title character who emerges at opportune times, including a sendup of the ending of Carrie. His inspiration only flags when, in one scene too many, he has his decomposing character lip-synch to pop love songs — as though demons singing sappily is a surefire source of humor.
All the same, something faintly depressing hangs over Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. It is not that the film is outdated but that it remains so in tune with the times. The reviews have been kind, and the box-office returns, for non-comic book fare, are sensational. The enduring popularity of this character and this world represents something like the triumph of the goth. Demons, dismembered bodies, guts spilling out of torsos, a deceased character being fed on by fish, and even parents killed by a disgruntled teenager — it’s all played for laughs. Audiences are laughing — some in the theater I saw the movie even seemed dressed vaguely like Lydia or Astrid — but others may choose to see the continuing Beetlejuice-ization of American society as a cause for mild worry rather than harmless guffaws. This is less a sequel than evidence of a cultural conquest. This is Beetlejuice’s world. We just live (or die) in it.
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Peter Tonguette is a contributing writer to the Washington Examiner magazine.
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