Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
Like most of us after 36 years, 73-year-old Michael Keaton, as evidenced by Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, moves slower than he used to. So does his 66-year-old director Tim Burton, whose return to the undead realm of his beloved 1988 comedy is somewhat logy, and maybe even a bit tone-deaf. (I'm still not sure how to take the half-satiric “Soul Train” that guides the recently departed to the afterlife – a disco-themed ride complete with stereotypically “Groovy!” Black conductor.) Yet what this long-gestating sequel occasionally lacks in energy and taste is completely made up for in charm, as well as the kinds of knockout, lunatic set pieces that turned its predecessor into such a singular work of Burton-ian art. You won't get Catherine O'Hara, against her will, leading a supernaturally choreographed “Day-O.” But you will get O'Hara, and supernatural choreography, and “Day-O” – just not in ways you may have anticipated.
More than three decades after Beetlejuice's Happily Ever After found the deceased Maitlands agreeing to share their Connecticut home with the living Deetzes and a few ghostly football players – in a sweet touch, we're told that Adam and Barbara Maitland did indeed find a loophole that enabled them to move on – Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) retains her ability to see the dead. Now, however, she's trading in that gift for cash, miserably hosting the tacky supernatural talk show Ghost House and enduring the fawning psycho-babble of her producer beau Rory (Justin Theroux). But after Lydia begins seeing visions of Keaton's demonic trickster Betelgeuse, it becomes evident that his sightings aren't hallucinations so much as premonitions. With step-monster Delia (O'Hara) informing Lydia that her father Charles survived a plane crash only to be killed in a shark attack, it's back to Winter River, Connecticut, the women go, joined by the willing Rory and Lydia's defiantly unwilling teen daughter Astrid (the inevitable, and wonderful, Jenna Ortega). The old house is just as they remember it. As they'll discover after a certain lunkhead repeats the guy's name three times, a familiar “bio-exorcist” is just as they remember him, too.
Not long ago, a friend apprised me of the fact that Keaton is on-screen in the first Beetlejuice for only 17 minutes of the 92-minute movie. I found that news astounding, because it really does feel like he's around for at least a third of it. With Burton's followup running 104 minutes, Keaton is probably in a similar percentage of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but this time you really notice his absences – and for understandable reason.
Even when Betelgeuse wasn't in sight, the 1988 release had terrific momentum because we were absorbing the rules and décor of the afterlife right along with the Maitlands; there was always some new piece of information or audacious visual to keep your brain buzzing. Plus, the film was consistently funny. Keaton's ghost with the most may be what viewers most vividly remember, but almost all of O'Hara's line readings were hysterical (as were her frighteningly focused stares), and Ryder made her woe-is-me Goth Girl intensely witty, and while Jeffrey Jones' Charles may have been a boob, he was a likable, funny boob. (The actor in real life? Maybe not so much.) Add the endearing pairing of Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis and the peerlessly throaty – albeit with a slit throat – Sylvia Sidney and there was, and still is, plenty of kick in Beetlejuice even without Keaton's presence. Here, there's considerably less. And even though that appears to be by design, I found myself antsier at Burton's sequel, more avid for Keaton's return, than I expected to be.
It goes without saying that the first film gives us a lot. Among the things it doesn't give us, though, are messaging and melancholy; Adam and Barbara aren't depressed about their passing so much as deeply confused, and even Ryder's recitation of Lydia's suicide note is purposefully, comically melodramatic. (We never expect Lydia to go through with her threat.) By contrast, I think we're meant to honestly feel and believe in the pain of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. As presented by the screenwriting team of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, Lydia's estrangement from daughter Astrid is serious business, as is the teen's anger and anguish due to the years-prior death of her father, as is Lydia's ongoing, secretly medicated struggle with trauma induced by her psychic powers and the events of '88. (This latter conceit comes as something of a shock, because Lydia sure didn't look traumatized when, happier than we'd ever seen her at the end of the original Beetlejuice, she was literally dancing on air.) Despite the silliness behind his cause of death – a demise so ridiculous that it's recounted, brilliantly, via stop-motion animation – even that talentless artiste Delia is legitimately mournful about no longer having Charles by her side.
Ryder, Ortega, and O'Hara are entirely convincing in their characters' discomfort and heartbreak. But why, precisely, are we being invited to witness it? I don't begrudge Burton and his writers for wanting to deepen the first film's themes and figures; as the director morphed from the 30-year-old of 1988 to the 66-year-old of today, he may even have felt a responsibility to add more heart and weight this time around. But the unfortunate truth of the matter is that, well-performed though it is, Beeteljuice Beetlejuice slows to a crawl every time sentiment enters the picture, and that includes when Astrid begins a tentative romance with a local cutie in a treehouse (Arthur Conti's Jeremy). Because you enjoy the actors' company, these scenes aren't hard to sit through, and the film sometimes finds ways to make the pathos go down easier, as when, at Charles' funeral, a children's choir sends him to the Great Beyond with a lovely, ethereal take on “Day-O.” (If only poor, half-eaten Charles had immediately landed there.) Yet I'd venture that roughly half of Burton's sequel finds him working in a morose and rather pokey register, and low spirits aren't the sorts of spirits one should associate with Beetlejuice.
Thankfully, there's the movie's whole other half to consider, and that one is frequently glorious. If it seems like I haven't spent much wordage on this sequel's plot, that's intentional, because like the original's, it veers off into nutball threads that aren't storylines so much as diversions – and only one of them feels like a mistake. In her role as a literal soul-sucking witch who, during the Black Plague, married Betelgeuse (!) before he chopped her up with an ax (!!!), Monica Belluci is granted a phenomenal entrance, an electrical mishap allowing her to reassemble her body parts with the help of a staple gun and the Bee Gees' “Tragedy.” (Now there's the Tim Burton we know and love!) Belluci's Delores LaVerge also has comically unsettling encounters with Danny DeVito's afterlife janitor and, as his name is revealed, the first film's Bob the Shrunken-Head Guy. But weirdly, none of this fiend's dirty doings add up to much: She vanishes for an inordinately long stretch of time, and when Belluci's stapled-together freak finally reappears, she's dispatched with maximum laziness. If it weren't for her presence allowing Willem Dafoe to play an underworld detective and former “detective” in Hollywood B-pictures, you'd wonder why Burton and the screenwriters bothered including LaVerge at all.
We do get the very amusing Dafoe, however, along with a cadre of shrunken-head associates (stick around for the end-credits tag to learn some of their names), and a piranha-attack victim whose killers still wiggle around on his jacket, and seven full minutes devoted to a choreographed visualization of that 1968 folk-pop ballad “MacArthur Park,” complete with enormous cake left out in the rain. (This sequence, which could rightfully be called “indulgent,” was also the film's only one to elicit from me genuine tears of laughter.) We get spurting blood and visible internal organs and venomous asps and a torso-less Charles wandering the afterlife in search of an exit. (The chief elephant in the room of this followup – Jeffrey Jones' 2003 registry as a sex offender – is handled by Burton, Gough, and Millar with an admirable blend of cruelty, forgiveness, and even love.) We get a finale that somehow suggests Carrie, An American Werewolf in London, and Trainspotting while remaining resolutely Tim Burton. And of course, beyond the enjoyment provided throughout by Ryder, O'Hara, Ortega, and the sublimely insufferable Theroux, we get Michael Keaton. That's more than enough to make Beetlejuice Beetlejuice not just worthwhile, but practically mandatory viewing.
As mentioned at the start, Keaton may not be as fleet of foot as he was back in '88. (Who among us is?) The passing years, though, have done nothing to diminish the actor's physical exuberance or vocal energy. He slips back into Betelgeuse's green hair, gnarly teeth, and ghostly white skin as if he'd never left it, and honestly, you could play back-to-back recordings of Keaton's growly readings from 36 years ago and today and never discern a difference. Looking as delighted to return for a sequel as anyone I've ever seen, Michael Keaton is pure pleasure in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and during the minimal time he's around, Burton's movie is pure pleasure, too. Prior to this film, I felt no particular need to hear Richard Marx's “Right Here Waiting” again in my lifetime. Now, with memories of Betelgeuse serenading Lydia with his lip-synced rendition while gently strumming a guitar, I might actually start seeking out that sappy 1989 hit for an occasional listen, if only because I can always use a laugh.
THE FRONT ROOM
Is The Front Room, the debut feature from twin writing/directing brothers Max and Sam Eggers, being promoted as horror simply because co-star Kathryn Hunter is abjectly horrifying in it? To be sure, there are viewers likely to be hugely unsettled by this release, particularly (1) couples who are expecting a baby; (2) couples who've had an unwanted in-law move in with them; and most especially (3) couples who've endured both at the same time. Despite the tenor of the trailers – and this isn't a Spoiler Alert so much as a Public-Service Announcement – the Eggers' outing isn't the dependable A24 freakout its advertising implies. Disregarding a few hallucinations, there's no supernatural angle, no Satanic leaning à la Rosemary's Baby, and, if I counted correctly, only two deaths, one of which transpires off-screen. It's not really a horror movie, and as a not-horror horror movie, it's pretty tiresome. Except for Kathryn Hunter. She's terrifying, and frequently in the funniest ways imaginable.
Brandy Norwood plays Belinda, a heavily pregnant anthropology professor with a rapidly vanishing job, a mountain of debt, and a public-defender husband (Andrew Burnap's Norman) whose childlike countenance is underscored by him looking uncannily like Harry Potter. After Norman's dad dies, a kindly priest (character-actor ace Neal Huff) reveals that the man's dying wish was for his son and Belinda have Norman's infirm stepmother Solange (Hunter) live in their home until her passing. Norman wants nothing to do with this plan, as the woman was a tyrannical, racist, frighteningly devout nightmare who refused to feed him as a child until he sang “Jesus Loves Me” with appropriate gusto. But Solange, in return for her housing, is willing to pay off the couple's mortgage and give them the profits from her late husband's estate, so Belinda figures “Why not?” She's about to find out why not.
Prior to Solange's arrival, much like awaiting Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, I was aching for Hunter to appear as soon as possible, and not merely because her performance(s) as the three weird sisters in Joel Coen's 2021 The Tragedy of Macbeth left me hungry for the noted stage actor be be cast as a fright-flick villain. Before she finally shows up, with a black veil covering her face and supported by two dementedly loud canes, everything about The Front Room feels all wrong. In conversation, the seemingly anesthetized Norwood and Burnap, playing partners of at least several years, appear barely to have been introduced, and from Belinda impulsively quitting her job to Norman forever running to work every time his phone buzzes, all of their actions and interactions are annoyingly contrived. But the underwhelming, formulaic dullness of the Eggers' offering vanishes the second Solange lifts her veil, because from that moment on, nothing that Hunter does or says is dull.
I find myself in an odd (if not altogether unusual) bind regarding whether to recommend the Eggers' film, considering the movie itself isn't worth seeing and Kathryn Hunter's performance shouldn't be missed. Anyone who watched the Coen brother's Macbeth, or even Hunter's brief appearance in Poor Things, likely knows that the 67-year-old British-American can do just about anything with her body and, principally, her voice – a singular instrument that only she can play. Employing a Deep South drawl that renders roughly a fourth of Salonge's dialogue incomprehensible and the other three-fourths almost debilitatingly unnerving, this masterly actor makes you giggle and shudder in equal measure, her mother-in-law from Hell not merely insinuating but advertising her interest in Belinda's unborn baby. Hunter's portrayal is Ruth Gordon's Rosemary's Baby turn with all the adorable innocuousness scraped off; Solange is here for that child, and believing she has God on her side, nothing will dissuade her from that mission. Vocally dexterous at suggesting a two-year-old or Mercedes McCambridge's Exorcist demon at will, Hunter keeps you on edge, and she spits up different shades of pukey goo just like a toddler or Pazuzu. Yet she's also able to make these deeply upsetting moments comedic (far more so than the film's distractingly eclectic series of “ironic” song selections), and you might find yourself laughing at, or even with, Solange as often as you recoil from her.
Sadly, though, Hunter's estimable contributions only take us so far in this misleading release that's more pregnancy-prelude/aftermath drama than it ever is any kind of thriller. Although Norwood delivers a few strong moments in the second half, particularly when stressing to her mother-in-law that her name is pronounced “Belin-duh” as opposed to Solange's Southern-fried “Belin-der,” her overall lack of expressiveness is a serious hindrance, and Norman hasn't been crafted with enough detail to make Burnap's interpretation rise above one-note. (Also unfortunately, barring Huff's pastor, there are no other significant characters on hand.) And after Belinda gives birth, and her baby and Solange are wailing and soiling themselves in equal measure, I'm sorry to say that the Eggers' feature debut just gets oppressively redundant, not scary so much as incredibly annoying. Parents dealing simultaneously with a newborn and an aged, meddlesome in-law will certainly empathize. But I doubt they'll enjoy The Front Room. Beyond that rare sect of Kathryn Hunter super-fans, I'm not sure who will.
