If a cult director continues a cult film after a long break, it doesn't automatically have to result in a successful work.
Beetlejuice is on sale again! We had to do without this delicacy for over 35 years, but now it is once again a master Tim Burton prepared personally.
When we Bio-Exorcists Beetlejuice The last time we saw him, he was sitting in the waiting room of the afterlife authority and had his head shrunken by an angry medicine man. The pear must have grown back by now, because the Lottergeist still looks appropriately shabby, but has a normal-sized head on his shoulders.
However, Michael Keaton is used quite sparingly in the title role because his unleashed madness can probably only be tolerated in small portions. In the first part he wasn't even active for 20 minutes and this time too his appearance time is a similarly short amount of time.
Scene from “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”
Beetlejuice origin story
In a short flashback, we finally find out (in Italian!) how Beetlejuice became the puke we know him to be. A few hundred years ago he was still very much alive and made a fatal decision to marry; although that seems entirely understandable for a woman who looks like Monica Bellucci.
The marital happiness that quickly ended continues to have an impact to the present day, as he is persecuted by his very pale, very angry and very put together wife, who, with her pastoral care, is haunting him. sorry: soul-sucking abilities can even be dangerous to a dead person. But Beetlejuice doesn't want to know anything about his old flame anymore because he still has his eye on Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), whom he really wanted to marry in the first part (and since Lydia never remembers this traumatic experience has really recovered, this horror comedy also strikes a serious tone).
Scene from “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”
Old guard, young star
Apart from Ryder, Burton at least brings full-blooded comedian Catherine O'Hara back in front of the camera from the old guard as the shrill performance artist Delia Deetz. The third member of this family group is his current favorite actress, Jenna Ortega. And what happened to family man Charles Deetz? His fate provides an opportunity for three generations of Deetz to reunite in the legendary haunted house on the hill, and the director manages to let this character run around a few times without the need for former actor Jeffrey Jones. He also puts us on old locations: The covered wooden bridge on which a fatal accident previously occurred and the city model in the attic where Beetlejuice lives are just as important as the winding afterlife in the “Dr. Caligari” style.
Scene from “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”
Guest stars as spectacular dead people
The living are actually dead, the dead are alive – here the laws of logic have lost their validity, because even at 66, Tim Burton has not lost any of his wonderfully bizarre humor and lets his imagination run wild. He's even more colorful than in the first part and outdoes himself with bizarre ideas.
You can roughly imagine what to expect if, shortly after starting, a green-faced person Danny DeVito drinking cleaning supplies as a ghost janitor. Another guest star awaits us later in the form of Willem Dafoe as a kind of “Dirty Harry” actor with his brain partially exposed. But this is just one of many characters whose lives you can immediately see. The actually unbeatable attraction is certainly one evil Beetlejuice baby.
Scene from “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”
Beetlejuice would be suitable for series production
So Tim Burton can really let off steam – but the result is a bit disappointing because a number of storylines run through each other and everything happens so hectic that you would often have wished for more time. Actually, one wonders why Netflix didn't get involved here, because this film contains so many ideas that it would easily have spawned its own series. What's more, the two screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar were already involved in “Wednesday” anyway, and Burton is probably still caught in series mode.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” offers – at least according to the title – a double pleasure, but actually the lottery spirit only comes when you call him three times. So should we expect a trilogy?
3 ½ of 5 body parts stapled together
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is currently showing in our cinemas. Click here for the showtimes!