When this wan sequel to Tim Burton’s second feature opened Venice International Film Festival last week, the cast seemed insistent on stressing what a jolly good time they had making the thing. All the fun is on the screen. Look, here’s Willem Dafoe as the ghost of a B-movie star who still thinks himself a noir hero. Winona Ryder, reprising the role of Lydia Deetz, is now the host of a terrible occult show on the telly. Jenna Ortega, whose Wednesday Addams for Netflix’s Wednesday surely guaranteed eventual Burton action, can’t do much with the dull role of Lydia’s daughter Astrid, but she too seems to be enjoying herself. And Michael Keaton is having an absolute ball. He’s chewing the practical effects as the returning title character. He’s opening his innards on screen. Fun? I nearly laughed myself awake. There really is nothing more tiring than watching other people whoop it up when you want only to escape into the fresh air.
There is a real hint of desperation about this thing. Burton has been on a downward curve over the past few years. The overcomplication of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and his live-action remake of Dumbo tested the affection of even his most fervent fans. So he has decided to jump on the “legacy sequel” train. What better way of deflecting accusations of pomposity than by returning to the horror comedy that was all the rage in the run-up to the Seoul Olympics of 1988?
It is scarcely possible to summarise the jumble of plots that the screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar – creators of Wednesday – have thrown at the wall in the expectations of some slime sticking. Early on, Monica Bellucci (Burton’s partner in real life) stitches her mutilated body together with indifferent effects to reappear, centuries after death, as Beetlejuice’s evil wife. So there’s that. And then Astrid falls for a neighbour who might turn out to be a ghost. Lydia’s awful fiance says Beetlejuice’s name three times and, as lore dictates, he returns from the underworld (or wherever) to wreak havoc. Any attempt to detail the story results in the jumble of barely connected incidents listed above. It is the ultimate bunch-of-stuff movie. A poke in the memory for those emotionally attached to the original film and to the various spin-offs that have intervened.
Some of the stuff does stick. You would have trouble arguing that Dafoe is good, but there is a relish to the performance that speaks well of his professionalism. Bellucci has a glamorous swagger that rises above the material. The best sequence comes with a – largely random – staging of Richard Harris’s immortal MacArthur Park. Once again, the episode seems to exist for no other purpose than to allow the cast to have more dreaded “fun”, but that indestructibly odd lyric is well suited to a film that itself abjures all logic. Cakes melting in the rain and old men playing checkers over here. An inexplicable appearance by the sandworms from Dune (or something very like them) over there. What the hell? Bung more stuff at the wall. It’s not going to cover itself.
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There is every chance that late-summer audiences may feel indulgent towards a busload of decent actors entertaining themselves on our money. The core purpose of Beetlejuice now seems like terribly old hat. Like The Addams Family and The Munsters, the original film played on a lingering affection for vintage American macabre – Universal Horror in particular – that was old when the core audience’s grandparents were young. But that strain has proved weirdly resilient. Just look at the popularity of Miss Ortega’s Wednesday. Never mind Keaton or Bellucci or Ryder. She was the star the crowds most wanted to see on the Venice red carpet. And they all had a great deal of “fun”.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in cinemas from Friday, September 6th
