“The juice is loose!” Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton)
Director Tim Burton is back to his zany side with enough logic and humanity to be considered one of the most accomplished artists of his time. His sequel to Beetlejuice, called Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, is first, like its predecessor, a wild take on the macabre and chaotic life both sides of the grave.
In this iteration, Beetlejuice, the unhinged, striped outfitted, black- eyed wacko, now wants to reconnect with the love of his life, Lydia (Winona Ryder), a TV celebrity psychic and currently residing above ground. He is now not what he once was in 1988: he has less time on screen and a softer mojo that appears to want more of what the living have.
Regardless of Keaton’s Batman-like charisma, the sequel is more about Lydia’s estrangement from her daughter. Lydia has enough money but not enough of her daughter, Astrid (Jenny Ortega), who is now possibly imprisoned in the Afterlife, a condition Lydia asks Beetlejuice to help with.
While Ryder’s Miss Goth has always been memorable, Astrid as environmentalist rebel is approachable and equally as loveable as Ortega in Wednesday. However, she is not immune to the magnetic pull of the afterlife having met the handsome Jeremy (Arthur Conti), who could be a denizen of both worlds. As in death, Astrid is like the rest of us—bound for the afterlife whether we like it not.
The sound track of this sequel follows smartly the original’s signature Harry Belafonte’s Day O with the epic MacArthur Park. Regardless of BB’s place with the best horror comedy, Burton lacks the simple brilliance of Mel Brooks’s in his best classics. Yet, Monica Bellucci as Beetlejuice’s ex-wife, Delores ,and leader of a death cult competes favorably with any Frankenstein monster when she staples her dismembered bod together for a delicious revenge.
Beetlejuice can be figurative or philosophical if you allow interpretation about the manic instincts of teens like her and our recurring obsession with the afterlife. Leave it to artists to interpret and our theologians like Marcus Borg to comment: “As for the afterlife, I don’t have a clue.” Burton, 36 years later, still entertainingly lets us wonder in comic speculation what it’s all about, here or there.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Shakespeare’s Hamlet