Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Is More of a Remake Than a Sequel: Review
But the Juice is loose, and Tim Burton’s long-awaited return to the afterlife hits all the same high notes as the 1988 original.
Michael Keaton as the titular trickster in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Source: Warner Bros. Pictures
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the long-delayed sequel to Tim Burton’s 1988 demonic farce, starts in the dark, with Donna Summer wailing a bit of MacArthur’s Park: “I don’t think that I can take it. ’Cause it took so long to bake it. And I’ll never have that recipe again.” Rest assured, even after 36 years, the director hasn’t lost his recipe. The sweet, green icing of Beetlejuice is flowing down.
“Living people ignore the strange and unusual,” we were told back in ’88. But audiences delighted in this cinematic oddity, and it was an instant cult classic. The film’s success may say more about America’s exhaustion with the hollow righteousness of the Reagan years than it does about Burton’s filmmaking. Because as great as it is, Beetlejuice just shouldn’t work.