NEW YORK (OSV News) – “The afterlife is so random,” observes a character in the horror-comedy sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (Warner Bros.). If the disorganized structure of returning director Tim Burton’s follow-up to the Reagan-era film that first made his reputation as a conjurer of Gothic atmosphere is anything to go by, it must be arbitrary indeed.
Winona Ryder reprises her role from the 1988 original. Once the teen occupant of the haunted house that serves as the principal setting of both movies, Lydia Deetz is now a widowed mother and the host of a ghost-hunting TV show. Jenna Ortega plays her disaffected adolescent daughter, Astrid.
As Lydia is once again bothered by the mischievous demon of the title (Michael Keaton), Astrid finds first love with equally alienated Jeremy (Arthur Conti), a beau who recommends himself to her not only by his good looks but by his penchant for reading Dostoevsky. Jeremy, however, is not what he initially seems.
Burton serves up some energetic and interesting set pieces, with the ever-enigmatic song “MacArthur Park” being turned to a humorous purpose similar to that for which Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” was long ago employed. And screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar manage the occasional one-liner.
But the plot meanders and several elements combine to restrict the suitable audience for this undisciplined follow-up.
They include the showcasing of gross-out splatter as well as a fast-and-loose treatment of the supernatural and the occult. To these ingredients, moreover, is added the presence of Father Damien (Burn Gorman), a pompous clergyman much given to pointless pronouncements.
Although the cleric’s title would suggest that he’s a priest, visuals muddy the waters. He is seen wearing a chasuble, but the church over which he presides has no altar, only a pulpit. Whatever his affiliation, his smarmy persona and the stilted, irrelevant dialogue put into his mouth suggest an underlying contempt for Christianity on the part of the filmmakers.
The formula for summoning Beetlejuice – whether willingly or in desperation – is said to be the three-fold repetition of his name. Its invocation over the course of just two features, however, proves to be at least one too many.
The film contains gory imagery played for laughs, irreverent humor, a fleeting sexual reference, about a half-dozen instances each of profanity and crude language, a couple of milder oaths, one pronounced and one bleeped rough term and a few crass expressions. The OSV News classification is L – limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.