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

Really Kinky Boots

Pillion has been described by one of its stars, Alexander Skarsgård, as a dom-com. What he means by that is that this motorcycle romance ticks plenty of rom-com boxes while sporting a heavy coat of BDSM and graphic sex scenes. This description actually sells the film a little bit short. Harry Melling plays Colin, an openly gay but quiet and reserved young man who lives at home with his father and terminally ill mother, Peggy. After singing in a Christmas barbershop quartet, Harry is spotted by enigmatic and unfeasibly handsome biker Ray (Skarsgard), who identifies him as someone with subservient tendencies. After a Christmas Day hook-up in a high street alleyway, Ray gives Colin the cold shoulder for months before taking him back to his house. Upon arrival, Colin discovers where his place in the household is, somewhere lower than the dog and slightly above the mud off Ray's shoe. He is tasked with completing all the daily chores, as well as anything else his master deems needing d...

Econ Air

Single location thriller Flight Risk is the latest film to suffer from an "over eager" trailer. That is to say, the trailer covers pretty much everything that happens in the movie, more or less in the exact order it occurs. On the plus side, it isn't a film that was ever going to keep any secrets so it doesn't suffer as much as some others have. FBI agent Madelyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) takes a flight with informant Winston (Topher Grace) but a short way into their journey they discover the pilot, played by Mark Wahlberg, is actually a mob hitman there to end them both before Winston can squeal. There is a brief opening at an Alaskan cabin and the finale is on a runway, but for the most part it's just the three of them in the cabin of a small plane. Events unfold almost like a theatrical play as the three talk and argue with intermittent attempts at murder. The main thing to know about Flight Risk is that it is ridiculous. The decisions the characters make a...

It Sure Does

Love Hurts is Ke Huy Quan's first ever lead role. After decades out the game and struggling to keep his insurance prior to his Oscar winning turn in "Everything Everywhere, All At Once", you can hardly blame him for taking the chance to front a movie. Unfortunately, in Jonathan Eusabio's directorial debut, he has landed in a misfire. Quan plays Marvin Gable, a cheery real estate agent living his best life as he crushes the sales game and keeps everyone in the office (except for his depressed assistant) happy with his home baking. Unbeknownst to his colleagues he used to be a gangland hitman for his mob boss brother "Knuckles" and when the mysterious Rose, who Marvin was supposed to have killed, remerges, big brother dispatches the goons to get some answers from him. Cue high jinks as Marvin battles henchmen kung fu style while trying to keep his current and past lives from colliding. It's a fun idea but nothing quite comes together in the execution. Th...

Uncomfortably (Ve)Numb

Despite his somehow enduring popularity, Venom is a conceptually rubbish character. He is born of a period in comics when publishers wanted to make their child friendly characters edgy and Spiderman media, be it comics, films, games or whatever else, tends to get worse whenever he shows up. "Kind of like the good guy but bad" is one of the most boring villain types to begin with and no writer has ever come up with anything interesting enough to make him deserve his top billing amongst the wall crawlers stacked rogues gallery. The previous two films managed to (somewhat) sidestep the blandness of the IP by hiring a great actor in Tom Hardy and letting him do Jim Carrey style physical comedy mixed with a heart felt love story between a man and his super powered alien parasite. Given it is the last in last in the trilogy, Venom : The Last Dance really wants to have epic stakes and emotional resonance, leaving little room for the things that made the first two movies watchable. ...

The Grey Advert

This Russo's action flick has all the ingredients of a top tier spy thriller but will leave you feeling like you've just watched an extended trailer for other films they want to make in the world of the "Grey Man". Ryan Gosling plays Sierra 6 (yes the Sierras are basically 00 agents with the twist they all used to be criminals) and is ideal casting as the sort of ass kicking man of few words this type of film is built around. All the archetypes you would expect are also present and played well by a stellar cast. Chris Evans is unhinged antagonist, Billy Bob Thornton is retired mentor, Rege-Jean Page is crooked politicain and Ana De Armas is the good agent caught in the middle. The plot is just as cookie cutter, involving Gossling being hunted by the people he used to work, computer files nobody was meant to see and hostages needing rescued. Of course, all these things are tropes for a reason and done well (like they are here) equal an enjoyable movie. And the Gre...

This Week at Home

Three films this week. First up is new Amazon Prime comedy Ricky Stanicky . A group of friends blame all their miss adventures on a fictional friend but when their partners become suspicious they hire a boozed up John Cena to play the part of the infamous "Ricky Stanicky". Its stupid and there's no denying the lying bro's deserve more comeuppance than they get but there are some good laughs and an unexpectedly uplifting ending. Next up Jason Statham kicks all kind of ass as The Beekeeper , a retired uber-badass who rampages from call centres to Washington after his elderly neighbour is scammed to suicide. The Stath spouts some insane dialogue, sometimes in something approximated an American accent while a couple of feds on his tale layer on the bee metaphors. Hits all the punching, kicking, shooting and gruffness you want in a Statham movie. Last up is The House of the Devil , an early entry in the fascinating horror filmography of Ti West. An homage to the devil ...

Best Foot 4Ward

The Fantastic Four : First Steps marks the third cinematic imagining of the first family of superheroes (not counting the unreleased Roger Corman movie of the 90's) and their introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Well, sort of. It's sort of because the story takes place in a separate dimension from the rest of the films. This is Earth-828, where the Fantastic Four are seemingly the only super heroes. More than heroes, in fact, they are the de facto most important people on the planet and via science and diplomacy they have ushered in an era of worldwide peace and unity. The world itself is a fantastically realised retro-futuristic version of the 1960's, something like Fallout crossed with the Jetsons or, closer to home, a live action Incredibles. The Four consists of; Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), brilliant scientist with stretchy powers, his wife Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), who can go invisible and create force fields with her mind, her brother Johnny (Joseph Qui...

Ain't Got Time For No Monkey Business

The journey Monkey Man has taken to get the big screen sounds almost as arduous as the revenge quest its title character embarks upon. About to lose funding due to the pandemic, director/writer/star Dev Patel was able to find a hotel on a small Indonesian island that could house the cast and crew. Not being able to bring in new personnel or equipment the story of making the film is one of cameras dangling from string, tables being glued back together so they can be smashed multiple times and crew members standing in for extras. Not to mention Patel himself breaking his hand during filming. Once completed it sat on a shelf with backers Netflix nervous to release it on their platform due to the movies scathing attitude towards right wing Indian politics. Enter Jordan Peele and his Monkey Paw productions who scooped the project up to give it the cinema release it deserves. The story begins with Patel's unnamed character scraping a living by taking beatings in an underground fi...

Vanity Unfair

One thing The Substance is not, is subtle. It shouts it's themes loudly. It bathes the viewers eyeballs with beauty and then assaults them with grotesque body horror of the highest order. It infests the ears with horrible squelching, popping and cracking. It's quite an experience. Demi Moore plays Oscar winning actress Elizabeth Sparkle, who now hosts a daytime yoga show produced by odious TV exec Dennis Quad. Deemed over the hill on her fiftieth birthday (despite looking like Demi Moore) and let go she turns to a shady procedure that involves injecting herself with "The Substance". This births the young and pristine Sue (Margaret Qualley) who picks up where Elizabeth thinks her life should be, becoming her own replacement on TV. The problem is, the two halves need to share, with each being awake for seven days at a time and like feeding your Mogwai after midnight, there are extreme consequences to not respecting the balance. The Substance is a high saturation pa...

Family Misfortunes

Final Destination Bloodlines is the sixth instalment in the franchise but the first for fourteen years. Its a bit of an anomaly for a series to take such a long hiatus when the last entry was a resounding financial success, but the break has lead to one of the best Final Destination films to date. The plot is generally the same as always, a premonition leads to a bunch of people escaping their intended death so the Grim Reaper tracks them down and dispatches them in insanely convoluted ways. With the distance between entries making this a quasi reboot, there is a small twist on the formulae. This time round, the main character has dreams of their estranged grandmother saving hundreds from a disaster in her youth. Turns out Death has been working his way through the survivors for years, with granny holding him at bay (by isolating in the most dangerous looking shack known to man) for years. Now all her descendants are on the chopping block, making this a family affair rather than the u...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog