THE GHOST WITH THE MOST IS BACK

 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Release date: September 6, 2024

Writers: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, and Larry Wilson

Director: Tim Burton

Main Cast:

•                 Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz

•                 Catherine O'Hara as Delia Deetz

•                 Jenna Ortega as Astrid Deetz

•                 Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse

•                 Justin Theroux as Rory

•                 Monica Bellucci as Delores

•                 Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson

•                 Amy Nuttall as Jane Butterfield

•                 Georgina Beedle as Janet

•                 Arthur Conti as Jeremy Fraser

•                 Santiago Cabrera as Richard

•                 Burn Gorman as Father Damien

•                 Danny DeVito as dead Janitor

 

(Rating 5 of 5)

Summary: (Spoilers! After all it’s a summary. Stop reading if you don’t want a spoiler.) The movie begins with Lydia Deetz as the host of her popular television “Ghost House.”  Using her abilities to see the dead she visits haunted houses to help the people living there, and to get their reactions recorded for TV.  During one program however she sees the image of Beetlejuice sitting in the crowd.  It forces her to retreat to the restroom, where she tells this other ghost to scram, as right now she doesn’t have time for that spirit’s problems.  Rory, Lydia’s boyfriend plus producer, comes into see what is happening.  He tries to calm her down only to discover there are pills in her hand that she is trying to take.  Rory wants her to overcome this addiction, but she convinces him to allow her to have one this night to get her through. 

Lydia with her newfound fame! 

Lydia doesn’t go back to her show as she gets a text from her stepmother about her dad.  When she gets there Delia explains that Charles was out bird watching when his plane crashed.  He survived that only to get eaten by a shark in the ocean.  Delia is trying to find an artistic way to express her grief while Lydia realizes she has to contact her daughter who she isn’t on speaking terms.

Someone who isn't happy about the family legacy!

While the Deetz Ladies are talking, the artist who was partnered in a project with Delia, walks off in frustration and fatally falls down a manhole.  His ghost now in the Netherworld is looking for directions.  The afterlife janitor, who killed himself drinking cleaning agents, so now he must janitor for eternity, is the one who gives them.  While cleaning an electric surge causes him to accidently knock over some boxes.  Out of the boxes fall pieces of a woman.  The pieces reconstruct themselves allowing the woman to assume her traditional form once again.  This woman is Deloros, she is a sole sucker and the first thing she does is eat the janitor ending his sentence and his existence.

Beetlejuice's bride from Hell!

Lydia and Delia go to pick up Astrid.  There is very funny scene where Delia calls out Astrid for her treatment of Lydia.  Mother and Daughter don’t get along and haven’t since Astrid’s dad died.  While trying not have a conversation with her daughter she thinks she sees Beetlejuice again.  The three women leave for Winter River, Connecticut.

It turns out Beetlejuice has his bio-exorcist business running successfully.  He has so much business he has an army of small heads working around the clock, with some other ugly ghosts as well. Beetlejuice’s only problem is keeping up with so much clientele.  That is until Wolf Jackson arrives. The famous actor who played a cop on TV who died doing a stunt and now services as a Netherworld law enforcement officer. He informs “Mr. Juice” about this threat that seems to be after him and eliminating any ghosts who get in her way.  The Ghost with the Most plays like he has no idea what is going on.  Jackson warns him that he better watch out for if a soul sucker gets you then “you’re just dead-dead.  And there is no coming back from that.” 

Business is good! 

Beetlejuice gets back to his headquarters and tells his small-headed staff his entire origin story, in Italian. Turns out Beetlejuice was a grave robber during the Black Plague, which is a highly dangerous occupation if there ever was one.  He fell in love with a woman named Delores and got married, but after their weird wedding ritual where they bit heads off chickens and sacrificed a goat, Beetlejuice discovered he was poisoned by her so she could eat his soul.  In rage Beetlejuice took an ax and chopped his bride to pieces.

He's here to keep it real!

  With the house wrapped in a funereal shroud, the morning of Charles continues.  Rory commandeers the proceeding to propose to Lydia in what is the most surreal marriage proposal in history. Lydia accepts and Astrid quickly leaves.   She rides her bike throughout the town, but she almost gets hit by a truck and dodging it she crashes through a fence.  There she meets Jeremy, a teenager hanging out in his tree house.  In Jeremy, she finds someone that she can bond with.  They talk about books particularly Crime and Punishment, problems with their parents, and the fact that Astrid thinks her mom is crazy because she sees ghosts.  Jeremy invites Astrid back anytime.   

Three generations and a parasite!

Charles is given his funeral and as his body is being placed into the ground a children’s choir is singing “day-O” in tribute to one of Charles and his family’s more memorable moments.  In the afterlife however his headless ghost who has not yet realized that he is dead, is looking for directions.  After he is given them a ghost laundry room attendant, that poor attendant is soul sucked by Delores.  While this is going on Beetlejuice is securing his work establishment from Delores and has his top small head, Bob, dress in his traditional striped outfit.  

Astrid and her new friend Jeremy!

Back in the old homestead, we learn that the Maitlands have “found a technically and moved on.” So, they won’t be in this movie, too bad.  To Astrid, it is just more evidence of her mother being a fraud.  The biggest evidence that fact her mother can’t see her dad.  In the attic of the old house Astrid finds an old family photo album.  Lydia sees it until she finds a Beetlejuice ad in the attic.  Lydia freaks out causing Astid to take off and she goes to hang out with Jeremy.  They walk past his parents with his mother stress baking and his father endlessly watching TV.  She checks out his room and sees his posters of 90s bands.  In his room he has a copy of Handbook for the Recently Deceased that he says he found at a yard sale.  With her mother getting married on Halloween, Jeremy invites her to come hang out with him and give candy to tricker treaters. 

Inviting a living girl to a dead world!

Upstairs Lydia confides to Rory about Beetlejuice, he doesn’t believe her and thinks she needs to confront her delusions so his says the name three times.  Lydia and Rory now find themselves in the model, in front a therapist’s office.  They are forced to “drop” in and their therapist is Beetlejuice himself.  In the meeting he spills his guts literally, and has Lydia give birth to a demon baby. Rory doesn’t accept what is happening is real and Lydia gets them out by yelling “home” three times.  Rory thinks the whole thing was a dream.

Lydia tells Delia what has happened, and they decide to leave but Astrid won’t go because she has her hot date.  The idea that her socially awkward daughter can possibly have a date outranks the concerns of the demon Beetlejuice back in their lives.  So, they decided just to bolt the attic door instead and Astrid can go on her date and Lydia can dream of grandchildren. She drives her daughter to the location and wants to get out to meet the parents but relents when she sees her daughter would be embarrassed by such an action.   

Beetlejuice in the waiting room.

Astrid learns Jeremy wants to kiss more than hand out candy, and she is cool with that but while they kiss, they begin to float, and Astrid learns that Jeremy is a ghost.  Astrid has the same abilities as her mother.  Jeremy tells her he died falling out of his tree house, breaking his neck, over twenty years ago. He didn’t get the Handbook in a yard sale. In the book he learned there is a special way he could live again if Astrid was to help him.  Bonus she will be able to see her father.

Well, this is not what she had planned! 

Delia is doing her own private tribute to her late husband and when she brings out de-fanged asps for her ceremony, she finds out the hard way that they were not defanged properly. Poisoned by the bites she quickly dies and wakes up in the Netherworld waiting room.  She tries to Karen her way out of it but none of that is works on this side.

Lydia goes over the details of selling the house with Jane, when she mentions Lydia’s date and the street, she left her on.  Jane says it can’t be the address that Lydia thinks it is.  That is the murder house where a teenage Jeremy Fraser murdered both of his parents and when the police caught him, they pulled him down from his tree house he fell and broke his neck.  Lydia then rushes over to the house blows past his ugly ghost parents and goes right to his room.  Only when she gets there, he is already taken Astrid to the afterlife.

 Lydia heads back to the house runs past Rory who is “fun sucking Halloween.”  In her desperation she goes up to her attic and summons Beetlejuice.  The Ghost with the Most explains to Lydia what Jeremy is intending.  He is tricking Astrid to give up her life for him.  Lydia makes same deal with Beetlejuice that she did in the first film: help for marriage and release from the Netherworld.  This time Beetlejuice gets it in writing. 

Not playing around anymore!

He gets the two of them into his office with a wall bomb and not a wall door as normal. He and Lydia enter the Netherworld and all his small-heads, save Bob, run into the real world to scare the heck out of the people of Winter River. The alarm goes off at Police Headquarters and Wolf Jackson summons his squad of dead cops to chase them down. 

At the immigration station in the Netherworld Jeremy and Astrid take a photo and she feels funny.  This is when Jeremy revels that he has betrayed her by tricking her to give up her life for his. Guards drag her away to the “soul train to the great beyond.”  While this happens Richard, her dead father, sees her being dragged away and runs into help.  Beetlejuice sends Lydia to pull Astrid of the soul train while he wonders off to find Delia who is still trying to Karen her way out and has been forced to use the B card.

Once again summoned to save the day!

While running away from the soul stealing guards, Lydia and Astrid, they hit the emergency exit and end up on Titan.  They almost get eaten by sandworms before they are rescued by Richard’s ghost.  They have a family bonding moment before going to stop Jeremy from completing the theft of Astrid’s life.  It looks like they are going to fail but the civil servant turns out to be Beetlejuice who sends him to literal Hell.

This time he wants it to work!

Deloras heads to police headquarters to find Bob who was being interrogated and that is the end of Bob’s afterlife.  Richard shows Astrid and Lydia the way out of the Netherworld, Astrid apologizes to her mother for everything she has put her through. The two head to the church for the wedding and they see Rory has brought all sorts of social media influencers to the event.  Beetlejuice crashes the party; he exposes Rory for the fraud that he is and gives Lydia a bit of revenge.  Then insists on his payment of marriage so he sucks all the guests into their phones and begins the proceedings. Beetlejuice uses his powers to force everyone to cooperate in the most choreographed scene in the franchise since Day-Oh.  Jackson and his squad of dead cops crash the party but Beetlejuice deals with them easily.  Then Deloras shows up and is about to have a showdown with Beetlejuice, but Astrid figures out a way to open a poral to Titan allowing a sandworm to come through.  Beetlejuice has learned something from his last encounter with the sandworms and transforms himself into a Spanish bull fighter and gets the sandworm to eat Deloras and Rory.  With their romantic rivals with a free trip to the Netherworld.  He wants to resume what they were doing before.  However Astrid finds a legal technicality to let her mother out of the deal, they say his name three times, and he blows up like a ballon. 

Lydia closes down her show and goes on a world tour, at Dracula’s castle they Astrid meets a young man dressed as Dracula.  They are shown to be married, and later Astrid is about to give birth. She gives birth to the Beetlejuice child that we saw earlier.  Lydia wakes up next to Beetlejuice, and then wakes up again alone.  Either way, Beetlejuice doesn’t seem to be done yet.

My Take: (Lots of Spoilers in this section too!  Yup spoilers.) This was a day that I never thought would come.  As a kid I loved Beetlejuice.  Like Ghostbusters, I began by watching the cartoon.  Unlike The Real Ghostbusters, the animated Beetlejuice didn’t age as well.  Re-watching it as an adult I was surprised by how much of the 25-minute program was made of fake commercials of Netherworld afterlife products.  However, I loved it as a child, and it sparked my imagination enough to see the movie.  And what its movie it was.  I ended up liking it more than the show and continued to watch it usually around Halloween once a year.  It’s funny that the main difference between the movie and cartoon that I focused on when I first saw the movie wasn’t that it was staring the Maitlands, who weren’t even characters on the cartoon nor the fact that Beetlejuice’s nature was much nastier in the film, it was that Beetlejuice on wore his “Beetlejuice suit” (the prison striped one) only for once scene. 

               After the success of the first movie most expected there to be a second. Micheal Keaton said for years that it was the only role that he was interested in returning to and exploring.  There was a rumor of one in the 1990s but that never came to pass. However, after thirty-six years we finally have it and it was worth the wait.  This movie hit it out of the park.

In the final act!

The new movie takes some ques from the animated series: Adam and Barabra are nowhere to be found, Beetlejuice is dressed in his official outfit, and the Juice travels with Lydia to the Netherworld and they have an adventure together. 

The first movie was a little clearer.  Local ghosts want annoying living people who they don’t like to get out of their house, but since they suck at being ghosts, they call in the expert, who is more than anyone can handle. Here we have Lydia trying to reconnect with her daughter, Rory and Beetlejuice trying to reconnect with Lydia, Jeremy trying to reconnect with his life, and Delorus looking to eat Beetlejuice’s soul and anyone else’s for that matter.  

So, Jane Butterfield-Lee, the daughter of the original Jane Butterfield.  I thought Jane’s daughter who we saw in the original was named Sara.  That’s what it said in the credits.  Now granted maybe the older Jane had more than one daughter, and the one we saw was the younger one.  (Namesakes are usually the older children but not always so I am just going with probabilities on that.)  We are just seeing this character for the first time where last time was her younger sister. It is interesting that Little Jane followed in her mother’s footsteps, I wonder if Littler Jane will do the same.

The origin of Beetlejuice.  That was interesting to learn.  I did kill a long-standing internet theory that Beetlejuice was a suicide over a spurned lover, who when he tried to kill himself by hanging screwed up and strangled himself slowly as opposed to a fast neck break.  A grave robber during the bubonic plague, who must have had a hell of an immune system, meets the beautiful Deloras.  They fall in love and get married but in order for her to maintain her immortality she must suck the souls of others.  She poisoned Beetlejuice in order to kill him and reap his soul.  However, before he succumbs to the poison, he grabbed and ax and took her apart. (So that is why she had to rebuild herself at the beginning.)  There are still some unanswered questions, like how was he recruited to be Juno’s assistant?  Why is he able to continue beyond the 125-year mark for a ghost before they are supposed to move on?  Well, maybe we might learn that in another movie.  

Delia thinks she sees Maxie Dean at the funeral.  Can she see ghosts too because the Deans were dead.  Didn’t Beetlejuice kill them in the first one?  He did send them flying headfirst into the celling I thought that would have broken their necks.  Maybe he teleported them out of there and had some plans for them later that never came to pass because he was sent back to the Netherworld.

I knew that the Maitlands weren’t going to be in the movie, but I was disappointed by the whole “we found a technicality and they moved on.”  I suppose it makes some sense, maybe helping raise Lydia and seeing her into young adulthood took care of their needs to be parents that they didn’t get to experience in life. I can see where they might have interfered with the story.  If they had been around, they could have gotten Lydia to the other side thus eliminating the need to get Beetlejuice, although I don’t think they would have been as effective and might have failed to save Astrid. 

It’s too bad they couldn’t have found a part for them through.  Genna David felt it was because ghosts don’t age and they—the actors—have gotten older.  Although I thought I found a way for them to get around that.  In my review for the first film, I wrote:

“In the film we see that most dead people’s ghost forms seem to be based on how they died.  As a kid I always wondered why the Maitlands weren’t always wet considering that they drowned.  I thought maybe drowning was the best way to go because you didn’t have to look weird in the afterlife. The real-world explanation was they were supposed to, but the actors found it impossible to work while in soaking wet clothes all the time. However, I think I have a better explanation.  We know that ghosts can alter their forms if they so desire.  The ghost’s appearance is a result of their self-image and mental state.  Every ghost the Maitlands meet, save Beetlejuice, is still haunted by their deaths.  They haven’t gotten over it yet, so their ghost forms project the tragedy.  The Maitlands died together and have had each other to help themselves through it.  So, in the end of the day they don’t care how they died, what is important is that they did die and are now ghosts.  They aren’t focused on the crash, so their ghost forms don’t show it.  Beetlejuice sees himself as a poltergeist, so his form is that of a rotting corpse.”

Now granted we now know that Beetlejuice is wearing his death as well.  However, as the Maitland’s watched Lydia grow to adulthood that may have allowed their self-image to change and assume and older form, even though they never reached that age in real life.  They could also slip back and forth in looking younger and older based on how they feel.  When they have date night, they look their younger selves and just take an older form around Lydia.  CGI can be used for scenes where they are their younger selves.  

I think I would have preferred Lydia say that they found a loophole to “expand their haunt parameters” allowing them to visit places they may have wanted to go in life but were unable.  This could have opened the door for them to return some other time even though they might not be in this movie.

“She’s still alive.”  That line from Lydia about her biological mother, is the best throwaway line ever. It is a bit odd considering the way that Charles always called Delia “your mother” when discussing her with Lydia.  So, what is Lydia’s Mom’s deal anyway?  If she is not dead, why is she not in her life at all?  I suppose it explains why Lydia was so dreary at the start of the first one. It would also add guilty to Lydia over her lack of relationship with her own daughter. 

So, the Jeremy twist was a good one.  Despite that I am tired of creeps having my name, I did enjoy this.  A great twist is one where you don’t see it coming but when you go back to view it again you feel stupid for not noticing it.  With Jeremy everything is there: the look on his face every time Astrid says she doesn’t believe in ghosts, the fact that his room is full of posters all from the 1990s, how he shops at “record stores,” and most importantly The Handbook for the Recently Deceased.   That last one should have been the main giveaway, but to be fair we have seen Otho and Lydia read and use the handbook.  Now did Jeremy die with his copy of Crime and Punishment on him?  Or do the people of Winter River often tell the tale of how the floating tome goes from the house the tree house just randomly?  The poor fool should have saw his ghost state as his chance at redemption but instead continues his evil ways allowing Beetlejuice to send him to Hell. 

Some random thoughts:

·        I wonder if Beetlejuice’s own time as a small-head at the end of the first movie is what allowed him to connect with and recruit all the other small heads to work in his bio-exorcist call center.  He sure had a number of them. 

·        So, there is no coming back from being dead-dead that Deloras brings.  I wonder if this relates at all to the ghosts of the lost soul’s room.  In both cases the ghost’s soul shivers too almost nothing.  Maybe Deloras should pay a visit there and put those poor ghosts out of their misery with a good death-death. 

·        So, in the first film they state the civil servants are all former suicides?  So, did Richard crash his plane on purpose?  Now in one of Beetlejuice’s newspapers there is a story about some deaths being mislabeled suicides.  So that could be the answer.  I suppose it’s also possible for non-suicide ghosts to just volunteer for jobs.  That seems to be what Wolf Jackson has done.  

·        Was that Deloras’s finger in the ring the first movie?  “Don’t worry honey she meant nothing to me.” 

·        So did Astrid really get married or was that just part of Lydia’s nightmare.  Considering she just had her first date—who turned out to be a ghost who wanted to steal her life—it strikes me as unlikely for her to have gotten married so soon.  If there is a third one, I expect Astrid to be unhitched.

On a larger note, let’s talk about Beetlejuice’s power levels.  In the first one I wondered if he had special abilities or if he just learned to use his ghost abilities to peek effectiveness.  Could ghosts such as Adam and Barbara (or now Delia and Charles) learn to do such things as well?  No, he is the ghost with the most.  We see this in how Beetlejuice even overpowers other ghosts, even those who have been dead awhile.  Jackson and his dead cop squad were taking care of rather quickly with just a single word, and even Deloras was stopped when he was able to redirect a sandworm.  His reality warping powers seem to beyond anything other ghosts can be able to do.  He is seemingly on par with Mr. Mxyzptlk from Superman comics or Q from Star Trek.  More of the former though like Beetlejuice, Mxyzptlk has a silly name weakness where Q has none.   

Lastly but not least we must take about Beetlejuice as the victim.  And I don’t mean of Deloras. The first movie focuses on concept of a ghost story from the point of view the ghosts.  How would you feel if you died a weird people moved into your house that your ghost manifestation can’t leave?  Well, how about things from the poltergeist’s point of view?  Here you have a demon who didn’t ask to be this way his crazy wife poisoned him. Saying his name can summon or banish him against his will.  He wants out for good.  Now he can either trick some stupid human to give up their life for his or he has to get married.

He meets Lydia who needs his help.  Her friends, the Maitlands are being exorcised.  He agrees to help her if she marries him, and he can be free.  She agrees.  He does his end of the bargain and saves the ghost couple from “death for the dead.” Does she hold up her end?  No, she spends the rest of the movie trying to weasel out of it.  Even the Maitlands, instead of saying “Thank you, Beetlejuice, for saving us from the lost souls room.”  They go on the attack and start trying to say his name.  Ultimately, they prevent the match, and Beetlejuice ends up back in the Netherworld getting his head shortened.  

This time Lydia’s daughter falls for a pretty face and ends up trading her soul.  In order to save the life of her daughter, in fact in order to understand what even happened to her daughter she summons Beetlejuice.  Once again Lydia promises to marry him, and this time signs a contract.  He gets her to the Netherworld allowing her to find her daughter.  Then Beetlejuice goes beyond what he promised.  Not only does he save Astrid’s soul from Jeremy, but he sends the creep to Hell. He exposes Rory for the abusive creep that he is and allows Lydia to get revenge on him.  Then Lydia weasels out of marrying him again.  Primarily with the help of Astrid, who Beetlejuice saved from oblivion.

And Beetlejuice still wants to wake up next to her?  He must be the most understanding ghost in the whole universe. I think Lydia should have just bit the bullet and married him.  Think how useful it would be to have someone with his reality warping abilities around. Even if you think he was ugly, he has shape shifting abilities just ask him to take a form more conventionally attractive like a Bruce Wayne-Micheal Keaton.

The film was worth the wait.