Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the review of the film by Tim Burton

The first film of Beetlejuicereleased in 1988, is both elaborate and simple. The visual universe of Tim Burton It’s lively and fast-paced, a riot of quirky humor and gore cartoonish which, together with Edward Scissorhands from 1990, defined the director’s style early in his career. But the story contained within all that strange architecture isn’t that complex: it’s essentially about two people who realize they’re dead and learn to be ghosts. It’s a film of discovery, a satisfying explanation of the best and worst practices of the afterlife.

Which makes Beetlejuice a difficult candidate for a sequel. How do you convincingly teach an audience what they have already learned and still remember fondly? Perhaps that’s why it took Burton and company 35 years to come up with a sequel. And yet, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice suggests that nearly four decades have not been enough.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuicepreviewed at the Venice Film Festivalis a heap of plots and quotes, so confusing and overloaded that it almost becomes abstract: the umpteenth legacy sequel which sadly only serves as a testament to the ingenuity of the original film.

When it’s not desperately imitating what worked in the original, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice introduces maniacally new characters and premises. Broadly speaking, the film is about Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), now an adult, who tries to reconcile with her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), from which she has become estranged. Lydia, a widow, has used her ability to communicate with the dead to become the host of a popular ghost-hunting television series, a job that is not very fitting for the bored and sullen loner we met in 1988. But people change, and now Lydia is a compliant woman who sells out for commercial success and whom her daughter regards as a fraud. It is a depressing reentry into the franchise: a grim declaration that adulthood flattens and compromises the personality.

Mother and daughter are pulled here and there by the film’s numerous narrative threads, which at times concern a mourning in the family, a marriage imminent, a case of adolescent infatuation and the furious ex-wife of ghouls that gives the film its title, intent on sucking (literally) his soul. Burton makes our heads spin wildly, jumping discontinuously between stories that never really converge. At one point in the film, Astrid asks her mother what happened to the ghosts that Lydia had known as a teenager, the ones played with such charm by Alec Baldwin And Geena Davis. Lydia hastily replies that they’ve found a loophole and moved on to the next level, at which point Astrid almost turns to the camera to say, “Very convenient!”

Which indicates that the film is well aware that easy narrative solutions are bad, but it still uses them. Problems are solved with a snap of the fingers or with sudden digressions from internal logic. Delores (played by Monica Bellucci), Beetlejuice’s murderous ex-wife (Michael Keatonof course), is supposed to be even more evil than Mr. Juice, and is presented in the film as a looming storm: what will she do when she finally gets her revenge? She then hovers on the periphery of the film until Burton abruptly decides not to deal with her anymore. The same goes for Astrid’s romantic interlude: a plot full of potential that is hastily sketched out and resolved.

Keaton, for his part, still remembers how to play the title character, though I wish someone had infused some bite into his jokes and asides. Ryder is thwarted by Lydia’s newfound meekness, while Ortega is forced to play a moody teenager who is less dynamic than the one she plays in Wednesday (always produced by Burton). Willem Dafoe he barely makes any waves as a deceased TV cop who works as a real detective in the afterlife (or something), while the big Catherine O’Haraas Delia (Lydia’s cheerful artist stepmother) struggles to stand out in this superficial retelling.

With his limp humorThe prepackaged sentimentality they excessive efforts to disgust us, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice waste a good cast And tarnishes the legacy of a cinema classic. The most irritating thing is that the people who willingly made the film were people who should know better than to disturb those who have been resting in peace for a long time.