Arts & Culture

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Where: In theatres
What: Movie, 104 mins.
When: Fri., Sept. 6
Genre: Comedy
Rating: NN (out of 5)
Why you should watch: Veteran actors Michael Keaton, Willem Dafoe and Catherine O’Hara offer decent diversions in largely unnecessary sequel

ALMOST 40 YEARS LATER, film visionary and writer-director Tim Burton resuscitates his Beetlejuice character with, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to the eponymous film bringing back many of the original cast for a film that is more clever than funny.

And it isn’t really that clever — not for Burton.

Burton falls into the sequel trap, chaotically dropping in elements from the first film without adding anything but confusion to the new film’s narrative. The best part of any Beetlejuice film is Michael Keaton’s manic Beetlejuice character, the sleazy ghost obsessed with marrying Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), his obsession in the first film. Keaton barely appears in the early stages of the film and the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice energy and engagement dramatically improves whenever he careens across the screen. Deetz is now a ghost chaser on TV, a career path that annoys her easily and constantly annoyed teenaged daughter, Astrid Deetz (Jenna Ortega). Family matriarch and recent widow Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara) is a highly successful conceptual artist and, like Keaton’s appearances, whenever O’Hara is on screen, the film lifts above the morass of its sprawling and disconnected storyline.

Beetlejuice is pursued through the afterlife by his angry ex, Dolores (Monica Bellucci) with cutaways to her story a tedious side tale that grinds through the film like a slow-moving train. Willem Dafoe offers a few chuckles, not wholesale laughs, as a dead actor who plays a tough-talking detective, the cop role that was his regular gig as a living actor.

There’s an impending wedding — or two — , a funeral and the sale of the original “haunted” Deetz home to offer threads of a story, but it’s all an excuse for flipping the tale back and forth from a pastel-coloured afterlife and the haunted “real world.” Burton fans will be disappointed with how little “Burton” is in this film. The phantasmagorical settings and iconic imagery that infuse even his dullest films with originality and, dare I say it, whimsy are largely missing except for a few afterlife moments. And a running Soul Train gag will only have meaning for those who viewed the original in theatres, leaving others to wonder why there are suddenly a bunch of Black people dancing in the film. Fun to see Don Cornelius, but it’s a punchline that will only resonate with older viewers.

Sadly, Beetlejuice should have been left dead and buried with a “do not resuscitate” order attached.