September 13, 2024

bettlejuice bettlejuice, catherine o’hara, jenna ortega, michael keaton, tim burton, winona ryder

Words by JANE CROWTHER


The juice is, once again, loose. Tim Burton returns to his 1988 horror-comedy for the opening of this year’s Venice Film Festival for unapologetic fan service and warm-fuzzies. Having admitted to becoming disillusioned with the film industry before deciding to revisit the ‘ghost with the most’, Burton throws all of his trademark quirks into a movie that features cameos, wacky needledrops, stop-motion and tactile practical effects to nostalgic effect.

bettlejuice bettlejuice, catherine o’hara, jenna ortega, michael keaton, tim burton, winona ryder

Catching up with Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder, complete with goth chopped fringe) decades after she first met so-called bio-exorcist, Beetlejuice, as a teen, this legacy sequel from the producer behind Top Gun Maverick, mines audience affection for the weird and wonderful original by lovingly repeating the journey. So TV psycho Lydia is called back to the New England haven of Winter River when her father dies (in an animated, comedic fashion) along with her step-mom (Catherine O’Hara), cynical teen daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) and odious boyfriend/manager, Rory (Justin Theroux). Lydia and Astrid have a strained relationship, not least because Mom’s slimy romantic interest is always trying to be a ‘dope dad’ figure, but their familial bonds are put to the test when Astrid meets a local boy and when Beetlejuice’s past comes back to haunt him – forcing him to plague the Deetz family again. Along for the helter-skelter ride are Willem Dafoe’s Neitherworld detective, Monica Bellucci’s corpse bride and an army of shrunken headed minions led by tremulous ‘Bob’… 

bettlejuice bettlejuice, catherine o’hara, jenna ortega, michael keaton, tim burton, winona ryder

Keaton and Ryder seem to have hardly aged since the original and fall back easily into step with him growling fourth-wall-breaking Beetlejuice one-liners and her looking delightfully bewildered. While the script may not seem quite as subversive as its predecessor, the film really takes flight when logic is abandoned and frivolity is honoured. Keaton literally spilling his sloppy guts, sucking influencers into their phones and making the entire cast sing and dance to Richard Harris’ bonkers 1968 single Macarthur Park (and yes, an oozing, green-iced cake is present) is a hoot, a couple of segments featuring stop-motion Saturn sand worms tickle and a daft character death genuinely upsets (the film is dedicated to their demise). Fans wanting more of the waiting room get it – plus a built-out ever-after universe featuring dry cleaners, immigration halls, subway stations and call centres inhabited by people who have died ridiculously. There’s disco dancing, a Richard Marx nod, a disquieting offspring and a goofy ending that leaves room for more. Might we want another visitation? If it’s brisk, disposable, self-aware silliness like this, then we’ll likely take a ticket and get in line.

bettlejuice bettlejuice, catherine o’hara, jenna ortega, michael keaton, tim burton, winona ryder

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in cinemas now

September 13, 2024

bettlejuice bettlejuice, jenna ortega
bettlejuice bettlejuice, catherine o'hara, jenna ortega, michael keaton, tim burton, winona ryder

DISPATCH: JENNA ORTEGA BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS


With the Venice Film Festival marking the move of summer into Autumn, it’s perhaps fitting that a Halloween movie opened the 81st festivities. Thirty five years after Beetlejuice was first released, its sequel reunited the original cast alongside Jenna Ortega on the Lido’s red carpet – something director Tim Burton had never envisaged for a film he admits he doesn’t quite understand the success of. A quirky horror comedy starring Michael Keaton as a potty-mouthed, green-haired ghost who haunts the Deetz family when they move into a new house, it was the film that made a star of Winona Ryder (aged 15 when she filmed) and cemented a decades-long collaborative process between Burton and his two leads. 

bettlejuice bettlejuice, winona ryder

In the years since, Beetlejuice has become a cult classic and after the success of other legacy sequels such as Top Gun Maverick and Ghostbusters: Afterlife it was only a matter of time before ‘The Juice’ returned to haunted audiences anew. And on a balmy August evening Greg Williams joined the cast pre-premiere at their Venetian hotel as the film received warm reviews from critics tickled by the return to practical effects, a Ryder-Keaton re-run, Ortega’s snarky charm and the daft fun of Burton’s distinct signature touch. 

‘Over the past few years, I got a little bit disillusioned with the movie industry, I sort of lost myself,’ the director admitted to journalists earlier in the day. ‘For me, I realized the only way to be a success is that I have to love doing it. For this one, I just enjoyed and loved making it.’ For Burton that meant working with Ryder, Keaton and Catherine O’Hara again. Having worked with Burton on other projects, Ryder felt safe to step into a new story with the director again. ‘My love and trust for Tim runs so deep and there was a sense of a certain playfulness and readiness to try things,’ she said, confessing that one of her favourite things about returning to the role of Lydia Deetz – not a TV medium and mother to a teenage daughter – was staring into Keaton’s eyes again. ‘It had been such a special experience the first one and just to be able to come back to it was just a dream come true.’

bettlejuice bettlejuice, michael keaton
bettlejuice bettlejuice, michael keaton

Burton calls Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ‘a weird family movie’ that examines the rifts between parents and children as Lydia returns to her original haunted house after the death of her father. Her teen daughter, Astrid, may not believe her mum can see dead people but she soon changes her mind after a run-in with a ghost and the afterlife. Burton credits some of his creative rejuvenation to making the first season of Wednesday with Jenna Ortega so she seemed the natural choice for the role of Astrid. Ortega – whose red-carpet custom Dior dress nodded to Lydia’s wedding dress in the original film – has had a similar fast rise to fame as Ryder and the two women bonded immediately on set, not only as mother and daughter but as actors who have become emo icons of their generation. ‘The way Winona and I got on was quite weird,’ Ortega says. ‘It was like we could read each other’s minds a little bit.’ Ryder was, she says, immediately warm and welcoming. ‘It was at a time where my career was taking a different turn. I didn’t realize that I needed that from somebody who could relate, but I did.’

bettlejuice bettlejuice, jenna ortega

Also along for the ride are Willem Dafoe as an afterlife detective who used to be an actor on a TV cop show, Monica Bellucci as Delores, a long-dead vamp with unfinished business with Beetlejuice; and Justin Theroux as Lydia’s odious boyfriend and manager. 

Burton also brought SFX guru Neil Scanlon onto the project to ensure that the low-fi, fast and fun ethos of the first film was resurrected – so just like the original, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice features tactile practical effects to add to the comedy and off-kilter vibe (the waiting room is rammed with ridiculous deaths via piranha, chimney, cats, sharks and hotdogs). The result, says Burton, is a movie very much in the spirit of the original and ‘a very simple emotional movie’ – one that gained a standing ovation post-premiere. ‘The Juice’ is very much loose.


Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in cinemas now
Read our review of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice here