Legacy sequels are rarely done right. But “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” true to its title, is better the second time around.
Known for pioneering the visionary goth culture in Hollywood, two-time Academy Award-winning director Tim Burton made sure that the follow-up to the 1988 “Beetlejuice” is not only packed with referential bits but experimental twists that moved the story forward and made the second film stand on its own.
The film still follows Lydia Deetz, played by Winona Ryder, 36 years later—parlaying her supernatural gift to communicate with the dead into her own television show. Lydia’s peculiar fame seems to break her relationship apart with her resentful teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) who finds her mother’s ability hard to believe.
After a family tragedy, the Deetz family, including Lydia’s stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara), is forced to return to their abandoned home in Winter River that is filled with dark memories.
For sequels that retrace the setting and revive the majority of the lead characters from their antecedent counterpart, one may often anticipate that they are solely executed for nostalgic value without putting much depth into the more recent story sequence.
However, Michael Keaton’s comeback portrayal of the titular character—the mischievous Beetlejuice—is both evocative and a breath of fresh air, with his signature wacky slapstick humor, priceless punchlines and pleasantly surprising redemption arc.
Contrary to his previous role as the delirious ghost-antagonist who always shows up uninvited to mess with the living for fun, Beetlejuice was intentionally summoned by Lydia this time—enemies turned partners in crime, if you will—to help save Astrid from the underworld.
Meanwhile, O’Hara’s Delia went from being a one-dimensional stepmom who is critical about everything in the first film, to a now-painfully blunt yet sincere mother to Lydia. Not to mention on this one, Delia effortlessly earned a lot of laughs for her facetious one-liners.
However, Ryder’s resurgence as Lydia may have initially required a double take from the audience to see if she is still the same eccentric and curious female lead that many fans loved in the original franchise.
Perhaps as a result of motherhood, it may seem that Lydia became more cautious and less intrigued by her own ghost-seeing ability. It is still refreshing, nonetheless, to realize throughout the course of the film that her persistence to put others first before herself was still intact.
On the other hand, Ortega’s execution of Astrid was the “missing puzzle piece” of the long-anticipated sequel. The resemblance between her and young Lydia’s teenage angst is uncanny, making it more believable that the two characters are of the same blood. Moreover, Astrid, who laments for her estranged mother, exudes an emotional impact that the first film appears to lack.
That is why when Ryder said during the promotion of the film that it took more than three decades to renew the franchise because they had been waiting for Ortega to be born, they were most certainly not lying.
Without a doubt, the sequel is graced by a legendary ensemble, including Justin Theroux who plays Lydia’s dim-witted boyfriend Rory, Monica Bellucci who depicts Beetlejuice’s vengeful and soul-sucking ex-wife Delores and Willem Dafoe who portrays Wolf Jackson, a narcissistic actor who likes to assume that he is an all-knowing detective.
While the film proves to be an essential continuation of the mystifying and comedic elements of its previous franchise, it unfortunately did not live up to its title as an eerie classic after an anticlimactic head-to-head confrontation between Beetlejuice and Delores.
Overall, the second film still delivered a perfect balance between being faithful to the original “Beetlejuice” and its fun practical effects, delightfully random musical numbers and unforgettable set of characters while also being unafraid to veer off a been-there-done-that conflict by introducing unexpected twists that not many other sequels have been able to pull off.
Indeed, the ghost with the most is back, not only to spill his guts but to feed dark fantasy fans with another round of chilling suspense and knee-slapping fits of laughter.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” arrived in Philippine cinemas on September 4. It is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.
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