AP – “I have global entry!”
Now, does that sound like a funny line? Of course it doesn’t. Whatever in the history of mankind 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 singularly inventive world of Tim Burton and that wacky afterlife waiting room from Beetlejuice, and it may become the one blessed time in your life you’ll ever guffaw about global entry.
It likely won’t be the only thing you’ll guffaw about. Burton is back – and, more significantly, he is BACK – with “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”, 36 years after the original. And for once, the question “Why a sequel?” is moot.
Not because we know the answer. (Do we?) But, who cares? It’s funny. It may even make you feel better about, well, death, though not “death 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, fiendish “bio-exorcist”, director Burton brings back much of the team behind the original, including, alongside O’Hara and Keaton, the still-lovely Winona Ryder as Lydia the Goth Girl (also, Bob the shrunken-head guy).
And we’ve gained Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe, and for the younger generation, Jenna Ortega, who, as a relatively normal figure, serves as an appealing anchor, her story moving the plot along.
Speaking of plot: if you didn’t see the original, not to worry. It all gets explained (as much as it should be ) in time. We begin in Winter River, Connecticut, still home to Lydia Deetz (Ryder), who came as a teenager with batty stepmom Delia and dad Charles, only to learn her new house was haunted by the recently deceased Adam and Barbara (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, alas not back).
Lydia looks much the same – dressed all in black, with spiky bangs and pale skin – but is now a widowed mother, a psychic mediator, and host of a cheesy reality show, Ghost House, in which she sees ghosts and asked, “Can the living and the dead co-exist?”
But one day she sees something in the audience that scares her: visions of Beetlejuice, who wrought havoc when she was a teen and who, when we last left him, was wasting away in the afterlife waiting room (apparently, HE did not have global entry).
Waiting just off set to comfort Lydia after this terrifying vision is her manager and boyfriend, Rory (Theroux), who has a little ponytail almost as smarmy as himself.
Lydia then gets a concerning message from Delia (O’Hara), an artist of questionable talent and unquestionable ego, who’s mounting a gallery show in which she herself is the canvas.
There, Delia told Lydia that she’s lost Charles. “Is he divorcing you?” gasped Lydia. “What a horrible thought!” replied Delia. “No, he’s dead.” (Such lines are catnip for O’Hara, a genius of comic timing).
Lydia called her daughter, Astrid (Ortega), at boarding school. Astrid listed Lydia in her contacts as ‘Alleged Mum’, which tells you much of what you need to know about their fraught relationship.
But let’s pause this account of the living, because we also have to catch you up on the dead.
Down where Beetlejuice is stuck, where the dead live – but not the “dead dead” – Delores, Beetlejuice’s ex-wife, has escaped from the crates (emphasis on plural) in which her body has resided. Watching the glamourous Bellucci literally staple herself together is just one of the glorious creative moments Burton and crew give us here. Alas, Delores doesn’t have much else to do, but this is rather spectacular.
We’re approaching spoiler territory, so let’s just say that things really get complicated when Astrid goes home to Winter River for her father’s funeral. There, she watches as Mom accepts a marriage proposal from smarmy Rory. Racing off to escape, Astrid runs into a cute young guy reading Dostoyevsky.
A relationship begins, one that will lead to unexpected mayhem. Let’s just say Lydia will need to call upon – gasp! – Beetlejuice, who will exact a fearsome price for his services, as he is wont to do.
And he appears none too soon. Keaton, in his white caked makeup and blackened eyes and hair that looks like he is perpetually sticking his hand into 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’s also got the juice flowing? Burton. It’s his inimitable energy that infuses this movie – a joyously rendered sequel that sometimes makes sense, and sometimes doesn’t, but just keeps rollicking. 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, with people in Afros dancing their way to wherever they are 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, the Donna Summer version.
“Someone left the cake out in the rain”, go the ridiculous words of the disco classic. “I don’t think that I can take it, ’cause 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 make us smile, chortle, even guffaw, for 104 minutes. And we can be happy with that. – Jocelyn Noveck
