2024-08-30 04:08:26
American director Tim Burton marks his new film called Beetlejuice Beetlejuice as a return to what he does most. The sequel to the 1988 horror-comedy about a couple of ghosts whose house is invaded by fashionable New Yorkers opened the 81st Venice Film Festival on Wednesday night. Czech cinemas will start showing the new movie next week.
The film was made by Tim Burton again with the original actors Michael Keaton, Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder. They are complemented by Willem Dafoe or actresses Monica Bellucci and Jenna Ortega known from the series Wednesday. Burton is currently exhibiting in Prague, the musical version of the first part of Beetlejuice will be performed by Prague’s Karlín Music Theater in November.
The studio Warner Bros. was interested in the sequel. already in the 90s of the last century, but the director did not want to return to the material for a long time. He was only encouraged by the response to Wednesday, which was launched by the Netflix video library in 2022. Thanks to him, the 66-year-old Burton got to thinking about what the raging demon Betelgeuse aka Beetlejuice, played by Keaton, was doing.
“I’ve been a bit disillusioned with the film industry for the past few years. This film has re-energized me and allowed me to get back to the things I love to do and the people I love to work with,” says Burton.
He was 30 years old when the first Beetlejuice was released. The Californian subsequently experienced considerable success in the early 1990s with films such as Edward Scissorhands or Ed Wood. He has fared more modestly in the past decade. His last film, Disney’s Dumbo from 2019, was panned by critics. “I didn’t make this sequel for money, but for purely personal reasons. I was looking for something that really mattered to me,” emphasizes Burton.
A soul-sucking monster
Beetlejuice told the story of a couple of newlyweds who do not survive a car accident, become ghosts, and the extravagant family of a New York businessman moves into their huge house.
The still from the Beetlejuice sequel features Winona Ryder as Lydia and Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice. | Photo: Parisa Taghizadeh
In order to keep their home, the heroes must scare New Yorkers out of it. As a last resort, they decide to call in a “freelance bio-exorcist”, a wild, lecherous and forbidden former assistant from the office of the deceased Betelgeuse, aka Beetlejuice. But he pursues his own goals.
Winona Ryder reprized the role of Lydia in the new film after 36 years. In the first episode, she was a teenager whose mother died. Her decadently dressed figure spoke to the popular Gothic subculture of the time. Now she is a widow, the host of a TV show about haunted houses, and also the mother of a rebellious daughter. Here she plays Jenna Ortega, who longs to reunite with her late father for a change.
While Lydia once fended off a meddlesome Beetlejuice who wanted to marry her, now she needs his help. Even Beetlejuice himself has a problem. In the underworld, his ex-wife Delores, a soul-sucking monster played by Monica Bellucci, is on the loose, and hot on her heels is a dead B-movie cop played by Willem Dafoe.
Twenty-one-year-old Jenna Ortega became a worldwide star thanks to her role in Burton’s series Wednesday. She was excited about the opportunity to work with the director again. “I joined a team of incredible greats and extraordinary people. Basically, I tried not to get in the way too much,” says the actress. “I was very careful not to just steal Winona Ryder’s work from the first film, but to give my character something new,” she mentions.
Beetlejuice Czech cinemas will start screening Beetlejuice on September 5. | Video: Vertical Entertainment
Ambiguous responses
Tim Burton said in Venice that he never understood why the first Beetlejuice became so popular. He didn’t even play it again before filming the second one. However, the camera shot the exteriors again in the same white Victorian house from the American state of Vermont as in 1988, and according to Burton, he tried to imbue the new film with the same playful energy.
This, for example, according to the British newspaper Guardian, did not work. His critic gave the film only two out of five stars. He criticizes him for the fact that the second time around, he doesn’t move this world anywhere, and that Burton doesn’t know the balance when he stuffs one eccentric idea after another into the story of the living and the dead, from sandworms to musical numbers.
“Only the subplot with Lydia’s rebellious daughter Astrid, played by Jenna Ortega with just the right amount of soulful sullenness, feels fresh,” writes the Guardian.
The site Variety.com is slightly reserved, according to which Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is more of a variation on the original film made for fans than it is a full-fledged independent work. “But even fan films can be made either well or badly, and I ended up enjoying Beetlejuice Beetlejuice quite a bit,” states this reviewer.
The BBC, on the other hand, is downright enthusiastic. “The film pays homage to its predecessor in an intelligent, loving way, but it surpasses it in practically every way,” says its contributor, according to whom the new feature is full of funny sayings and great animated effects, which Tim Burton, as usual, rather than digitally created by hand, for example using puppets.
There are too many storylines, but overall this is one of Burton’s best films and a definite return to form after the unsuccessful Dumbo from 2019, the British website continues. “You can see in that film that the director had fun while filming. And the audience will have fun too,” concludes the BBC.
Even thanks to the participation of Jenna Ortega, popular among young people, analysts predict commercial success for the novelty. According to The Hollywood Reporter website, it could take up to $80 million in North American theaters in its first weekend alone. The original 1988 film ended up grossing roughly $75 million worldwide, which is around $200 million today when adjusted for inflation.
Burton’s biggest commercial success remains 2010’s Alice in Wonderland, grossing over a billion dollars worldwide.