STARRING: Michael Keaton, Wynona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe. Story by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith. Screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Based on characters created by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson. Music by Danny Elfman. Directed by Tim Burton. Budget $100 million. Running time 104 minutes.
Arriving a mere 36 years after the original, this much longed for sequel reunites most of the original cast and several new ones for one more go on the Beetlejuice merry-go-round. Directed by a creatively spent director and surviving purely on the goodwill generated by its lead actor, this is a film with none of the wit of the original, or scintilla of its charm, a film which crams four subplots into its running time to create an experience that defies physics by seeming to last longer than the gap between the first and second movie.
The plot finds an adult Lydia Deetz (Wynona Ryder), a pill-popping burn-out who hosts a popular TV show called Ghost House, she's being aggressively dated and perused by her manager Rory (Justin Theroux) who wants to marry her for her money. Lydia is also estranged from her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who hates her mother for not being able to see the ghost of her dead father who died mysteriously while traveling through the Amazon rainforest. When Lydia discovers her father has been killed and eaten by a shark she returns to the family home to be with her stepmother Delia Deetz (Catherine O'Hara), now a successful modern artist. Meanwhile, Astird, a deeply depressed schoolgirl comes home for the funeral and meets a local boy and the two form a relationship. Meanwhile in the afterlife, Beetlejuice who is now the boss of the newly deceased division is still trying to get it on with Lydia, and Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson - a ghost detective is trying to capture Monica Bellucci's Delores, Beetlejuice's ex-wife, she's somehow back for revenge after Beetlejuice dismembered her with an axe.
The film is an unholy mess, with tonnes of backstory and subplots constantly bogging it down, for large portions of this film major characters disappear while the rest of the film slowly trundles on boringly and without any true spark or excitement. And while this film isn't the complete cluster fuck that Boredlands was, it's not far off.
The middle portion of the film sees all these various plot points play out in slow succession but without any involvement or excitement that is until the final act finally rolls slowly into play.
Utilising the possession scene from the first film as its template, the third act set in the local church, gathers all the cast together for a rendition of Richard Harris's sublime McArthur Park hit. It's this sequence that saves the film from being a total crushing disappointment but alas despite being the absolute high-light of the entire film, it's sadly far too little far too too late.
The cast, every man-jack of them, give it their all, trying their damndest to make this whole sorry mess work, but they're just not given any help from the bloated script, or tired direction. Burton uses the same camera tricks endlessly, as he flies his camera over the town again and again, zooming in on the Deetz house, or the model of the house, not once, not twice, but each goddam time the sodding action cuts back to the house.
The film avoids making Beetlejuice the main focus to the expense of everything else and the individual story strands are amusing but just don't gell into a cohesive whole. And while Dafoe and the rest delight and revel in their roles Monica Bellucci is criminally wasted in the role of Bettlejuice's ex-wife.
The original movie, which I watched just the day before seeing this, is blissfully brief, the plot is simple and the film moves at a pace but never at the expense of the story. This lazy creatively dead sequel avoids all of that by over egging the pudding so much it implodes under the sheer weight of story its expected to carry.
Too much of everything ruins this film as does the bloated story and the complete lack of originality.
Thank god for the willing cast of great actors all having a hoot, for them no blame is given, that rests purely on the shoulders and souls of the writers and director who deserve to burn in the pits of hell for all eternity for this bland, dreary dirge of a movie.
5/10
