Squeezing the Juice: a review of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Directed by Tim Burton

Screenplay by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar

Story by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, Seth Grahame-Smith

Based on Characters by Michael McDowell, Larry Wilson

Produced by Marc Toberoff, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Tommy Harper, Tim Burton

Starring

Michael Keaton

Winona Ryder

Catherine O’Hara

Justin Theroux

Monica Bellucci

Jenna Ortega

Willem Dafoe

Cinematography Haris Zambarloukos

Edited by Jay Prychidny

Music by Danny Elfman

Production companies The Geffen Company, Plan B Entertainment, Tim Burton, Productions Domain Entertainment

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures

Running time 104 minutes

It’s the very things that make a movie a cult classic that also make it nearly impossible to do remakes or sequels. The actors, plot and style are so unique and so indelibly stamped on the public consciousness that it defies replication. It’s nearly impossible to imagine new releases of The Princess Bride or Casablanca.

There’s a number of elements that go into a cult classic, It has to have the ideal actors for the roles, and enormously good chemistry amongst the characters. The writers and directors just happen to strike gold. Knowing what their goal is isn’t necessary: Casablanca was created with five different directors and about a dozen writers and nobody on the set had a clue how it was going to end until near the end of shooting. It has to break a lot of the film-making rules. No studio dared touch Monty Python’s Life of Brian until George Harrison came along, saw the screenplay, and underwrote the entire thing, a ten million dollar investment. Studio resistance to Blazing Saddles is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Luck plays a key role: The Producers was destined to sink into unseen obscurity except that Peter Sellers, who had been rejected by Mel Brooks for the role eventually played by Gene Wilder, saw it in an empty theater and loved it so much he took out a two-page ad in the New York Times praising it to the skies.

But perhaps the most important elements to a cult classic are originality and uniqueness. Remakes or sequels, pretty much by definition, lack those two elements. On the exceedingly rare occasions when a followup movie works and is regarded as a worthy successor, the concept shifts from cult classic to franchise. At that point, Hollywood grinds it into the ground over the years until everyone is sick of it. Older readers may recall when Star Trek and Star Wars were cult classics. Or Karate Kid.

Which brings us to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The original was a cult classic. Wildly original and raucously funny (I still consider the “Dayo” scene the funniest I’ve ever seen), it ticked all the boxes; great cast, great direction and production, created against the odds.

Once it became popular, the move was on to create a franchise. According to USA Today, “Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, which changed the locale to a tropical island, was green-lit after the original film made $74 million, but never went into production.” Sounds like a crossover between Barney the Dinosaur and The Exorcist, doesn’t it? Hopefully whoever came up with that was fed to one of Tim Burton’s stripy sandworms. A good working title might have been Gidget Goes to Hell.

Development hell ensued.

But interest in the movie kept bubbling, resulting in an animated series (which was pretty dire) and a stage production. The latter finally got the wheels turning again about six years ago. Burton wanted to do it if the original spirit could be kept. Elfman had his musical genius at the ready. Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara were more than ready to recreate their prized characters.

In the end, it was Lydia Deetz that made the sequel a reality. Both Winona Ryder, who played Deetz, and Tim Burton envisioned her thirty years later as the Goth Teen who becomes a fucked-up adult with daughter problems of her own, but still retaining the resourcefulness and intelligence of the girl. Lydia has a funky podcast, Ghost House with Lydia Deetz. Her show producer, the skeezy and overbearing Rory (played by Justin Theroux) is both a Otho stand-in from the original show and an live-on-Earth corollary to Beetlejuice himself. She still doesn’t get along with her mother, artshow Soho curator Delia Deetz, now less pretentiously avant-garde but still a burden. The movie begins with her husband and Lydia’s father, Charles, meeting a gruesome death that concluded with him getting his head bitten off by a shark. (This made it possible for “Charles” to appear in the bureaucratic afterlife without using Jeffrey Jones, the actor who was involved in a child porn distribution scandal and saw his career destroyed.) Lydia has a daughter of her own, Astrid, who is more receptive to emotional reality than Lydia was at that age, but still disaffected and a loner. Brilliant casting there: Jenna Ortega, who plays the main character in Wednesday. One of the strongest elements of the sequel is that the human characters all evolve, quite credibly and consistently with their basic personae.

Beetlejuice, of course, doesn’t change a bit, being, as he is, an immortal demon in hell. Michael Keaton may be 36 years older, but he does an amazing job of recreating his unchanging character, complete with the utter abadon (pun intentional) and wild impolicy of Beetlejuice.

So: does it work? The answer has to be yes. The elements that made the original so richly rewarding are all there, the expected growth and change is there, and also the expected lack of growth and change. Hell is hell. We get a better look at it (including an uproarious scene with Danny DeVito as a post-life janitor).

And yes, a song get abused horribly in this iteration, too. The execrable MacArthur Park, written and composed by Jimmy Webb; first recorded by Richard Harris. Someone left the cake out in the rain. Richly deserving of a Beetlejuice go-over.

It worked well enough that USA referred to the “Beetlejuice franchise.” But have no fear: Tim Burton doesn’t envision one for at least another 35 years, but which point he would be over one hundred.

And beside, if the sequel was called Beetlejuice Beetlejuice what would the next one be called? No, don’t say it. Let’s not go there.

But if you liked the original, this is truly a worthy successor.