Tim Burton is an institution of modern cinema, and in many ways, that has hurt him as a filmmaker. Conflicting, I know, but allow me to explain. When Tim Burton first started out as a director, securing his feature film debut on Pee-wee’s Big Adventure in 1985, he spent the next decade-plus delivering work that mined his favorite themes: the macabre, the outsiders, and the undervalued independents of the world. All the while, he was honing his own idiosyncratic visual style, tone, and aesthetic—deeply indebted to pioneers of the German Expressionism movement, such as Robert Wiene, Fritz Lang, and F. W. Murnau. Across films like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and Ed Wood, Burton became an increasingly skilled craftsman of cinema, cultivating a filmic world entirely of his own making and becoming one of the most widely recognized working auteurs of his day.
But in finding such mainstream success, Burton also lost himself. One can debate the quality of his work throughout the ’00s, but I think it’s safe to say that by Alice in Wonderland in 2010, it seemed as if Burton himself was intent on dismantling the very legacy his early work had so endearingly built. While there was the occasional exception that proved the rule (I actually really like Frankenweenie from 2012), by and large, his post-Alice work was disappointing at best and maddening at worst. Rooted in garish CGI visuals, tired narratives, and surface-level explorations of watered-down versions of themes he had explored with such nuance and articulation earlier in his career, latter-day Burton seemed to have grown content with success and lost his passion for making the kinds of films that got him there in the first place.
Now, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice sees Burton returning to one of his earliest and most beloved works, and the question loomed large: could Burton actually shake the dust from the rafters and deliver something special here? For the first time in a long time, Tim Burton feels palpably, viscerally connected to the film he is making, and the result is a blast-and-a-half that sees Burton finally finding a way to utilize the vast financial and cinematic resources at his disposal to deliver a work that feels like a culmination of his own visual style and grammar in a modern context. In other words, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is an indulgent, gratuitous, and messy-as-all-get-out affair, and it is rad as hell.
TOP FIVE THINGS ABOUT “BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE”
5. The Music
As with the overwhelming majority of Burton’s work, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is scored by none other than Danny Elfman, and Elfman takes the opportunity to go buck-fucking-wild in the best of ways. In ways not dissimilar to Burton himself, Elfman has kind of gone on his own fluctuating arc over the course of the decades. For Elfman, it felt less like he had pigeonholed himself and more like his film score work was being increasingly confined to a pre-determined bag of tricks that producers and audiences expected from him. Elfman himself spoke about these frustrations in multiple interviews, especially regarding the use of temp tracks (temporary scores pulled from other soundtracks, implemented early on in the editing process before the official score is composed). He cited projects like Avengers: Age of Ultron as particularly frustrating due to this limiting practice.
With Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, however, Elfman seems creatively unleashed, free to revisit some of the delightfully chaotic motifs from his earlier collaborations with Burton while infusing them with fresh energy. The result is a score that is as playful and manic as the film itself, helping to elevate the onscreen madness with Elfman’s signature mix of gothic whimsy, bombast, and occasional eerie melancholy. It’s a great companion to Burton’s renewed vigor, adding to the film’s overall sense of joy and mischief.
4. The Cast
The ensemble cast of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is an embarrassment of riches. From returning cast members like Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara, to new additions like Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, and Willem Dafoe, the film is packed to the gills with phenomenal performers delivering irreverent and infectiously fun work that bolsters the mood and joy throughout.
Every single one of them does a bang-up job, but special praise must go to Michael Keaton and Catherine O’Hara, both of whom step back into their iconic roles with such all-encompassing commitment that it’s astonishing. Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega also turn in strong performances. Although their on-page relationship is fairly standard, they manage to imbue it with enough pathos and conviction on-screen to make it truly compelling.
It’s clear that everyone involved is having the time of their lives on set, and this enthusiasm absolutely registers on camera in a palpable way.
3. WEAK SPOT: Searching for a Story
The script for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, both of whom previously collaborated with Burton and Ortega on Wednesday. While Gough and Millar are talented writers, especially adept at establishing tone and atmosphere through the details of their environments, their script for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels simultaneously like too much and too little.
On one hand, the film lacks a mainline story. It’s more of a collection of disjointed scenarios for each character that only vaguely connect, if at all. On the other hand, these disjointed scenarios encompass an entire season’s worth of plot, and the film’s brief runtime sees them cramming it all in while sprinting through it. The result is a film with at least four different inciting incidents spread across its first two acts, none of which really seem to take hold.
To paraphrase Trey Parker and Matt Stone, there’s a lot of ‘and then’ rather than ‘therefore’ or ‘but’ in the story of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Almost none of the story beats flow meaningfully into one another, ending instead on seeming non-sequiturs that do little to provide the film with a sense of meaningful momentum. It’s less a cohesive story and more a grab-bag of various ideas, with no one having done the work to stitch them together in a coherent, cohesive, or convincing manner.
2. Burton is Back, Baby
And sure, mileage will absolutely vary from viewer to viewer on how much the story and structure problems detract from the moviegoing experience. But for me? The film is more than held up by the sheer level of craftsmanship, artistry, and palpable exuberance on display from both in front of and behind the camera. Because make no mistake, folks: Tim Burton has gone and gotten his groove back and is firing on all cylinders in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Whereas the Tim Burton of just a few short years ago would have almost certainly employed endless amounts of muddied, gray, and less-than-stellar CGI-aided compositions to bring the world of Beetlejuice back to the big screen, he delightfully does next-to-none of that here. Instead, we get an overwhelmingly practical and tactile film, full of in-camera practical effects work, inspired lighting choices, robust camera work, propulsive editing, and tangibly delightful cinematography.
Shot by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos (who just recently shot the gorgeous A Haunting in Venice), edited by Jay Prychidny (who provided similarly resonant work on Scream VI), with production design by the legendary Bo Welch and costumes by the iconic Colleen Atwood (both of whom are classic Burton collaborators), Beetlejuice Beetlejuice looks absolutely fantastic and moves with an assuredness much more reminiscent of classic Burton.
Burton himself has spoken about how the film creatively rejuvenated him, and it’s absolutely apparent within the work of the film itself. Rather than chasing cheap and vapid nostalgia for the original film, Burton takes the core principles of the filmmaking craft of that film and builds upon them with a gargantuan budget, a larger scale, and a grand sense of scope. The result is a film that is much more interested in pushing the boundaries of what Burton can pull off and finds some incredibly enjoyable answers in the process.
1. The Finale
I am very much not interested in spoiling the final scenes of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but suffice it to say that there is a needle-drop of a fantastic and long-underappreciated song in the climax. The ways in which Burton and his team go out of their way to meaningfully integrate the song into the action is wonderful. In an age of cinema where movies often just slap songs over scenes without much thought, every frame of the climax here feels meticulously planned to coincide with the song’s flow from verse to chorus and back again. It’s outright synchronous, in a way that I haven’t palpably felt in a movie theater in a long time. The result is that, despite the story and structure problems, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice manages to stick the landing, highlighting Burton’s renewed craft and the joyous performances right to the very end.
RGM GRADE
(B)
Tim Burton has long been my go-to “baby’s first auteur” example for general audiences. He’s one of the few filmmakers who has cultivated such prominence and concentrated craft over the decades that general audiences know his name and feel they can recognize the hallmarks of his work. With Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, it feels like Burton is finally living up to that level of recognition and iconography once again, delivering a crowd-pleasing hit that feels quintessentially of his oeuvre in the best of ways.
