Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) So maybe this won't go down as the most perfectly crafted Tim Burton movie, but then who cares?
Come to think of it, are there any perfectly crafted Tim Burton movies? How could there be when he fearlessly colors outside the lines and revels in over-the-top visual excess? Naturally the films come out sloppy and all over the place, but that's exactly what enchants us about Burton's bizarro universes.
We come for the crazy and wait for Burton to drop a bucket of unbridled insanity all over us.
And with this sequel to his 1988 hit fantasy with live-wire Michael Keaton, he does not disappoint.
No sense in describing what goes on in this film, other than to report that eternal jokester-demon Beetlejuice (Keaton) still lusts for the now adult Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder). And who better to play Lydia's daughter than the morosely deadpan flavor-the-month Jenna Ortega.
Happy to report that Burton and his screenwriters Milles Millar, Alfred Gough and Seth Grahaeme-Smith found new inventive madness to depict life in the Afterlife. And it remains our favorite Kafka-esque funhouse, operating as a beleaguered bureaucracy overwhelmed by coping with a literal eternity of paperwork.
(We'd more likely believe the 'Beetlejuice' films representation of life after death than anything the churches are putting out......)
Special mention must go to the film's giving Jimmy Webb's ridiculous overheated pop anthem "Macarthur Park" a thorough workout in the finale......never has a song found a more fitting movie to stumble into.
Too true.....the film's not as nimble and fast on its feet as the first 'Beetlejuice', but that shouldn't stop anyone from enjoying the heck out of it. The real world gets nuttier as we speak so we don't envy Tim Burton and his co-creators trying to compete with today's daily headlines.
Bless their strange little hearts.....they pulled it off. 4 stars (****).
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