It's Always Showtime

1988's Beetlejuice is unique blend of visual style, humour, lite horror, performance and trappings of the decade. How to recreate this is a question sequel Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice doesn't even try to answer. Instead it throws its weird and wonderful characters into as many chaotic scenarios as Tim Burton and team can think of and do so at such a manic pace that the viewer doesn't have time to think if they are enjoying it as much. Thanks to the amount of talent on display, this method ends up working a treat.

The story begins with Winona Ryder's Lydia Deetz, now the star of a TV show where she contacts the dead, receiving the news that her father has died. Consequently, she reunites with step mother Delia (Catherine O'Hara) for a memorial service come art project back at the old family home. Accompanying the returning cast members are Lydia's daughter Jenna Ortega and new partner Justin Theroux. Ghostly couple Gina Davis and Alec Baldwin are no longer in residence (a throwaway line is all the explanation we get) but Beetlejuice is still periodically skulking around their model village with designs on reuniting with his former bride to be.

From there things move at a break-neck pace with subplots galore; Rider and Theroux have an upcoming wedding, Ortega meets a mysterious love interest in the village while butting heads with her mother and mourning her deceased father, O'Hara is doing her weird art stuff, Beetlejuice's ex wife is after him and sucking souls in the process, we follow an afterlife cop who was given the job because he played one on TV when alive. It's a lot to cram into a movie that comes in around 100 mins but it manages to accommodate it all effortlessly by adopting a dream like story structure where things just happen when they need to, regardless of logic. The rules you established in the first film getting in your way? Ignore them. Inconvenient for Beetlejuice to be on screen? Have him go to the "little boys room". Need people to handily be in the same place as each other? Make it so. The result is a story that doesn't quite hold together but it doesn't really matter, in fact it just adds to the surreal vibe of proceedings.

And surreal it is. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice may be even weirder than its predecessor with animated sequences, black and white golden age of horror homages and musical interludes.The events are equally dark but the tone is lighter, offering a pretty flippant attitude towards life and death, and it airs more on the side of out and out comedy. The unique vibe it creates allows the film to get away the things that often derail nostalgia sequels. All the call backs and fan service lines are here but worn lightly enough that it feels like they are added in the spirit of fun rather than as a painfully wedged in studio mandate. Like in say, the last Ghostbusters film. Even adding in a Beetlejuice origin story doesn't poison the well as it's done flippantly and pretty hilariously.

The returning cast slip effortlessly back into their roles and the new additions fit the world perfectly. Willem Dafoe's Hollywood cop is a blast and Justin Theroux has a great time as the slimily over-earnest new man is Lydia's life. Is Monica Bellucci here so that Burton can indulge his Frankenstein's Bride fetish by dressing up his latest partner as a hot zombie? Maybe, but it's never a bad to have Monica Bellucci in your film. We are even treated to a Danny DeVito appearance.

It's still Micheal Keaton's show of course and he doesn't miss a beat slipping back into the skin of the "bio exorcist". Wisely, he doesn't get much more screen time than he did back in 1988, keeping his impact at maximum. The film makers also avoid the trap of turning him into a good guy, however much he aids the rest of the cast we are left in doubt that allowing him to stay in the world of the living would be a disaster. He plays the hits from the first movie while adding in some new tricks and it always feels the film picks up a notch when he is on screen, which is as it should be.

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice really has no right to exist. Fortunately, it feels like it was born out of a bunch of friends desire to hang out and make something fun rather than an executive's bean counting. It may be much messier than its predecessor but it is often funny and always creative. So much fun I wouldn't even mind if they decided to let the juice loose a third time.

8 Asps de-fanged out of 10.

Comments

Won't Somebody Think of the Children

Weapons is the sophomore effort from writer/director Zach Craggier and while his first film, "Barbarian", was well received, this feels like a clear step up. The film's fantastically eerie marketing campaign revolved around the movies central mystery, at 2.17 AM an entire classrooms worth of sixth graders get up out of bed and disappear into the night. It's a great hook but the story proper actually picks up a couple of months after the event and unfolds over a couple of days as the townspeople continue to deal with the fallout. The point of view shifts between a bunch of characters and time and space is given to fleshing out the small town details. This approach, combined with the sombre and eventually horrific goings on, gives the story a very Stephen King feel. It also works as a tension release, wiping the slate somewhat clean every time we switch perspective. The slight downside to the condensed mini series approach is that it lengthens the film with some segm...

Toxic Shock

The Toxic Avenger ambles his way into theatres some two years after the film was first shown at festivals. Strange that the movie had so much trouble finding a distributor given the presence of major names, relatively mainstream sensibilities (compared to the 80s original anyway) and the fact it's actually quite a bit of fun. Events take place in a fictional city inside a cartoonish, ultra-capitalist, crime-ridden caricature of 80s America, with locations called things like "Depressing Outskirts" and "Ye Olde Shithead District". Peter Dinklage is down on his luck janitor Winston Gooze, a widower with a step son who attempts to break into the headquarters of the mega-pharmaceutical company he works for when he discovers his gold level insurance doesn't cover treatment for his brain condition. Things go south and he is transformed into The Toxic Avenger, a mutated super human who sets about righting some wrongs in his crime ridden city. The film attempts t...

Love is a Battlefield

The Roses is technically a remake of 1989 black comedy, "The War of the Roses", but sticks far less closely to the source novel than its predecessor, with director Jay Roach and writer Tony McNamara bringing a drier, more understated tone to the humour. Add in pitch-perfect performances from Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman in the central roles and you have a fantastically fun hundred-odd minutes. After briefly seeing disillusioned architect Theo (Cumberbatch) and ambitious chef Ivy (Colman) first meet, the film skips us forward a decade to the now-married pair having abandoned their native UK to live their dream life in America. Theo is on the verge of revealing his architectural masterpiece while Ivy is cooking outrageously elaborate cakes in her role as stay-at-home mum to their two children. A freak storm ends up flipping their lives around and Ivy's chef career hits the big time while Theo holds down the fort at home and resentments slowly accumulate over th...

We are Living in a Material World

Materialists is, on the surface, a romantic drama-comedy about a New York matchmaker who faces a choice in her own love life. It has something more on its mind though, presenting a forensic examination of modern adult relationships and the incompatibility of expectation and genuine feeling. Dakota Johnson is Lucy, a specialist in matching together "elite" couples. For elite, read some of the worst people on Earth. Men who demand their partners have knockout bodies, adhere to strict weight limits and the younger the better. Women who will only consider the tall, rich and in one case, white. In Lucy's world marriage is a business deal and the ultimate match is the one who checks the most boxes. As a "voluntary celibate", she carries this philosophy into here every day life and has no interest in dating until she can find the rich man who will make husband material. The love cynic is a classic trope for the lead in a movie with this set up but there is much more...

Honey Doesn't

Honey Don't is the second film from the director/writer team-up of Ethan (one half of the brothers) Coen and his wife Tricia Cook. Like their previous effort, "Drive Away Dolls", it is wonderfully queer but lacks any of the sharpness and precise pacing that typifies a classic Coen brothers movie. Margaret Qualley is Honey O'Donahue (a name you will hear spoken a LOT over the course of the film), a private investigator in Bakersfield. She is essentially a classic noir gumshoe detective transported to sun-bleached, modern-day California. After a would-be-client dies, Honey begins an investigation that has her cross paths with Chris Evans's skeezy preacher and the mysterious French woman who represents his business partners. She is also attempting to provide support to her sister, who has a small army of children, including an eldest daughter who she is constantly at loggerheads with. All while working her way through the lesbian population of town, including embarki...

Dressed for Fun

The Naked Gun is a legacy sequel to the mad cap comedy franchise of the late 80's/ early 90's, with Liam Neeson playing Frank Drebin Jr, son of the legendary Leslie Neilson's detective from the original movies. Is big Liam quite as good at deadpan hilarity as Neilson was? Possibly not. Does this film ever completely match the highs of its predecessors? Probably not. Is it still very funny? Absolutely. The film arrives amid a cinematic landscape devoid of out of and out comedies, with laughs mostly relegated to one liners in action films or the silly sidekick in a romcom. Fortunately, from the moment a Girl Scout peels off her face to reveal a gurning Neilson, right through to a joke filled credits roll, The Naked Gun is interested solely in making you chuckle. Sure, there is a plot, involving a mcguffin literally named PLOT device and an evil tech mogul, played with deliciously deadpan malice by Danny Huston, but it's all about the gags. The comedy runs the gamut from ...

I Got Bombs But I'm Not a Bomber

Oppenheimer posed a tricky question for perennial hit maker Christopher Nolan. How do you make a three hour biopic of a scientist compelling enough to bring in big money? Turns out the answer is to not make a biopic at all. While J. Robert Oppenheimer is indeed the focus of the film it eschews any traditional biopic format, instead serving up what is essentially a heist or even sports movie wrapped up in a courtroom drama. This allows the director to indulge his favourite hobby of playing with time, as the story jumps between two different panel hearings while also covering Oppenheimer's early career and of course the work of the Manhattan Project. This approach works incredibly well with the three hour runtime flying by. In fact, if you go to see this in the cinema you might want to skip the large cola as there really isn't any time when little enough is happening to sneak in a toilet brake. Technically the film is outstanding. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, follo...

Money and Masks

The challenge for Dumb Money is how to make a story about stocks interesting, especially when anyone interested either already knows what happened or can easily look up the events. The answer given here is to focus on some great characters played by grade A actors. The story is a simple one, albeit one seasoned with odd bit of financial jargon. Way back in pandemic times (2021) a low rung financial investor called Keith Gill led a Reddit driven movement to buy up stock in video game retail chain Gamestop, massively driving up its share price and giving investors a huge return. This sparks a backlash from the big finance institutions betting on the companies demise. Paul Dano plays Gill with Seth Rogan, Vincent D'Onofrio and Nick Offerman appearing as real life Wall Street investors alongside some made up "average Joe" characters portrayed by America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos and others. When every character is introduced we see their net worth, from the multiple billions ...

2024 at the Cinema

Bye bye 2024, time to put your ducks in a row. If ducks are films I saw in the cinema. As ever, ranking is purely my opinion (although my opinion is obviously correct), a movie needs to have been released in the UK during calendar year 2024 and I have to have seen it on the big screen for it to be eligible. 60. The Strangers: Chapter 1 Unrelentingly tedious reboot of an already mediocre home invasion thriller that ramps up nothing but the banality. If your idea of entertainment is watching an insufferable couple hide while a man and a woman in stupid masks walk about slowly then this is the film for you. Otherwise the only scary thing here is the fact they have already filmed chapters two and three. 59. In a Violent Nature You don't need to make people drink curdled milk to know it would taste awful. Similarly, you shouldn't need to make people watch a slasher film that follows the killer for the whole runtime to know it's a terrible idea. Dialogue is replaced by endless...

2025 Halfway Ranking

2025 is halfway done so its time to get ranking. Only films I've seen for the first time in the cinema are eligible and we are talking UK releases from 1st January to 30th of June. If your favourite film of the year isn't here, I didn't see it on the big screen. If it is here but low, feel free to tell me how wrong I am. 39. Hurry Up Tomorrow When a musician decides to write and star in their own movie the results are often pompus nonsense, so the problem with this effort from Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye isn't that its ridiculously self-aggrandizing (although it very much is), its that its unrelentingly dull, hideous to look at and worse to listen to. The star should have just made a concert movie. 38. A Working Man Jason Statham is the perfect Hollywood action man, able to look cool shooting guns, punching peoples lights out or driving fast cars. Sadly, the meandering script and piss poor production values on display here give him no chance to shine and leav...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog