“I have worldwide access!”
Does that sound like a funny sentence? Of course not. What in human history and airport lines could be funny about global entry?
But put it in the mouth of comedy goddess Catherine O’Hara, and place it in the wildly inventive world of Tim Burton and that crazy afterlife waiting room from “Beetlejuice,” and it could be the only blessed time you’ll ever have in your life. experience. once laughed about global entry.
It probably won’t be the only thing you’ll laugh about. Burton is back – and more importantly, he’s BACK – with ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’, 36 years after the original. And for once the question: ‘Why a sequel?’ is debatable.
Not because we know the answer. (Do we?) But who cares? It’s funny. It may even make you feel better about death, but not about death. And Michael Keaton somehow looks exactly the same as he did in 1988 (to be fair, it helps that his character was already dead.)
Returning to his tale of Keaton’s ghostly, diabolical “bio-exorcist,” director Burton brings back much of the team behind the original, including, in addition to O’Hara and Keaton, the still-beautiful Winona Ryder as Lydia the Goth Girl ( also Bob the man with the shrunken head).
And we have Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe and for the younger generation Jenna Ortega, who, as a relatively normal figure, serves as an attractive anchor and her story sets the plot in motion.
Speaking of plot, if you haven’t seen the original, don’t worry. It’s all explained in time (as much as it should be). We begin in Winter River, Connecticut, still home to Lydia Deetz (Ryder), who came as a teenager with crazy stepmother Delia and father Charles, only to find her new home haunted by the recently deceased Adam and Barbara (Alec Baldwin and Geena). Davis, unfortunately not back).
Lydia looks much the same — dressed all in black, with spiky bangs and pale skin — but is now a widowed mother, psychic and host of a low-budget reality show, “Ghost House,” in which she sees ghosts and asks, “Can the living and the dead coexist?”
But one day she sees something in the crowd that scares her: visions of Beetlejuice, who wreaked havoc when she was a teenager and who, when we last left him, was languishing in the waiting room of the afterlife (apparently HE had no worldwide entry.)
Just on set to comfort Lydia after this terrifying vision, waiting is her manager and friend, Rory (Theroux), who has a little ponytail that’s almost as emerald as himself.
Lydia then receives a disturbing message from Delia (O’Hara), an artist of questionable talent and an unquestionable ego, who is organizing a gallery exhibition in which she is the canvas. There, Delia tells Lydia that she has lost Charles. “Is he going to divorce you?” Lydia sighs. “What a terrible thought!” Delia answers. “No, he’s dead.” (Such lines are catnip to O’Hara, a genius of comic timing).
Lydia calls her daughter Astrid (Ortega) at boarding school. Astrid lists Lydia in her contacts as “Alleged Mother,” which tells you a lot about what you need to know about their fraught relationship.
But let’s pause this story about the living for a moment, because we also need to catch up on the dead. Where Beetlejuice is trapped, where the dead live – but not the “dead dead” – Delores, Beetlejuice’s ex-wife, has escaped from the crates (emphasis on plural) that her body has been living in. Watching the glamorous Bellucci literally stitch herself together is just one of the glorious creative moments Burton and his team give us here. Unfortunately, Delores doesn’t have much else to do, but this is quite spectacular.
We’re approaching spoiler territory, so let’s just say things get really complicated when Astrid heads home to Winter River for her father’s funeral. There she watches as mother accepts a marriage proposal from smart Rory. Astrid races off to escape and comes across a cute young guy reading Dostoyevsky.
A relationship develops, a relationship that will lead to unexpected chaos. Let’s just say Lydia will have to make an appeal – gasp! – Beetlejuice, who will exact a terrifying price for his services, as he usually does.
And he shows up none too soon. Keaton, with his white caked-on makeup and blackened eyes and hair that looks like he’s constantly sticking his hand in a plug in the wall, slips remarkably smoothly into his old role. “The juice is loose,” as he likes to say.
But you know who also gets the juice flowing? Burton. It’s his inimitable energy that imbues this film – a cheerfully rendered sequel that sometimes makes sense, and sometimes doesn’t, but just keeps rolling. Among the ridiculous delights along the way: a “soul train” in the afterlife, which is not only literally a train of souls, but a replica of the variety show “Soul Train,” where people in Afros make their way to wherever they’re going.
And if we don’t have the lip-synced “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” from the original, we do have a lip-synced “MacArthur Park,” Donna Summer’s version. the rain,” are the ridiculous words of the disco classic. “I don’t think I can stand it because it took so long to bake it, and I’ll never have that recipe again.”
In the Burtonian spirit, let’s just say it took a long time to bake it, yes, but the director has recovered the recipe – at least enough to keep us laughing, chuckling and even laughing for 104 minutes. And we can be happy with that.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” a Warner Bros. release. Pictures, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association “for violent content, macabre and gory images, strong language, suggestive material and brief drug use.” Running time: 104 minutes. Three stars out of four.
