Susan Granger’s review of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (Warner Bros.)
Ghoulish nostalgia dominates “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice” as director Tim Burton riffs on his 1988 high-camp comedic ghost story.
In picturesque Winter River, Connecticut, widowed Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) – easily identifiable with the same jagged black bangs she wore as Goth Girl – is now a psychic mediator, communicating with the spirit world, hosting an exploitative paranormal TV reality show called “Ghost House” produced by her sleazy, opportunistic boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux).
Lydia’s husband Richard was killed on an Amazon trek. Their skeptical teenage daughter Astrid (Jenny Ortega) loathes her mother’s morbid preoccupation with the occult.
Lydia’s narcissistic artist stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) is still around but her father/Delia’s husband, Charles Deetz (originally played by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Jones), is eliminated in a blood-soaked Claymation sequence.
It’s Charles’ wake/funeral that brings the dysfunctional family back home, as Delia wraps their hillside farmhouse in Christo-style black gauze. That’s when Rory proposes to Lydia, who accepts – infuriating Astrid, who takes off into town where she meets Jeremy (Arthur Conti) and they plan a date for Halloween night when her mother’s upcoming “Witching Hour” wedding is scheduled.
Which brings us to the manic, malevolent, centuries-old demon Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) who can be summoned from the Afterlife by saying his name three times in quick succession.
In his Netherworld lurks the corpse of Delores (Monica Bellucci), who is determined to reclaim trickster Betelgeuse as her husband. Plus there’s ghost detective Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), who was once and still is – a hammy actor.
Unfortunately, Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin), the farmhouse’s former occupants who originally hired Betelgeuse to scare off the Deetzes, have moved on.
Scripted by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar – sharing story credit with Seth Grahame-Smith – it’s familiar, belabored and even more weirdly bizarre than the original horror fantasy.
FYI: Tim Burton’s real-life partner Monica Bellucci told Elle France: “I love this dream world where monsters are kind, like we can turn our darker aspects into something bright, forgiving. Tim Burton’s films talk about that a lot.”
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10 “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice” is a sentimentally macabre 6, playing in theaters.
