Monthly Archives: September 2024

Evolution of Character

Evolution of Character – Abraham Lincoln

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When Hollywood looks for subjects to create historical biopics on, the most compelling subjects usually end up being important world leaders spanning across history.  For American films, the Presidents of the United States have often been given the cinematic treatment.  From our founding fathers to the men and women who are still shaping our nation today, there are a fair amount of film dedicated to these important figures.  But there probably hasn’t been an American icon that has appeared on both the big and small screens more than our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln was not a founding father, but his impact on our nation may have been even greater than that of the people who shaped it in the first place.  And his story lends itself so well to cinema.  Born and raised in the humble beginnings of a log cabin in the early American wilderness, Lincoln became a self made man who found his way into a law profession that in turn led to a career in politics, spurred by a passionate belief in the abolition of slavery.  His eloquent speech and intelligent mind made him one of the great debaters of his day, and he carried the torch of abolition with him in a bid for the presidency, though it came at a volatile time for this nation.  His election to president and promise of emancipation of the slaves was violently rejected by the southern states, all of which soon seceded from the Union and ignited the Civil War.  But, Lincoln became a steadfast wartime leader and not only did he see the Union to victory over the Confederacy, but he also kept his promise of emancipation, ensuring the passage of the 13th Amendment in Congress, ending the barbaric practice of slavery once and for all in America.  But it came at the cost of an assassin’s bullet, which prematurely ended Lincoln’s life, preventing him from seeing his achievements bear fruit in the years after the war.  All of this history has made for some compelling cinematic moments, which is why Lincoln’s life story has been one of the most widely dramatized in all of cinema.  What follows are some of his more noteworthy big screen appearances.  Not only do they show the many ways that Lincoln continues to be a compelling figure in history, but it’s also interesting how the span of cinematic history itself shows different perspectives on the same man, showing the way history itself can be viewed differently over time.

JOSEPH HENABERY in THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915)

Unfortunately for Mr. Lincoln, one of his earliest big screen appearances comes in a movie that is antithetical to his legacy.  D.W. Griffith’s monumental Civil War epic is one of the most influential and groundbreaking films in history; responsible for setting the precedents for so much of what we know as cinema in it’s wake.  It is also Confederate apologia and a virulently racist film that was historically responsible for reviving interest in the Ku Klux Klan.  Undeniably one of the most controversial films of all time, and it is still a lightning rod over a hundred years later.  So, how does a film that spits in the face of everything that Lincoln stood for represent the man himself.  Griffith, despite using his film to glorify the “lost cause” of the Confederacy and the KKK that arose out of it’s ashes, seems to also show a tiny bit of reverence for Lincoln himself, though it’s still very surface level at best.  Griffith still understood the iconic nature of Lincoln in America’s historical legacy, and he presents him as this stoic, serious man who leads with a dignified air.  The movie doesn’t tell us much more about the man; he’s barely a part of the main plot and is more or less just a background element on which the plot pivots.  Joseph Henabery certainly looks the part, with the well-defined bearded chin and sunken eyes that we all know very well from Lincoln’s many portraits.  It’s interesting to note that the movie itself was only 50 years separated from the life of Abraham Lincoln, which today would be the equivalent of us looking back on the Watergate era in politics. There might have been people who saw The Birth of a Nation during it’s original release who had also seen the real life Lincoln in person, which shows you how we are not too far removed from these historical events as we might think.  Lincoln though should have deserved a better debut on the big screen than a horrific racist movie that the man himself would’ve likely condemned.

WALTER HUSTON in ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1930)

Fifteen years after The Birth of a Nation premiered, Griffith would try to atone for the hateful nature of his past epic with a movie devoted to telling the story of Lincoln himself.  But, it was too little too late.  While it is a far better movie than Nation for the simple factor that it doesn’t support the Confederacy and the KKK, Griffith still doesn’t create a compelling story around the life of Lincoln either.  The movie is a speed run through the life of Abraham Lincoln, giving us an episodic look at all the touchstone moments in his life, from childhood to his presidency, to ultimately his assassination.  But you know what Griffith conveniently leaves out; Lincoln’s abolitionist activism.  The Emancipation Proclamation gets only a passing mention in the film, which is complete whitewash of history as ending slavery was the benchmark of Lincoln’s political career.  In Griffith’s film, Lincoln is instead celebrated as the man who saved the country from division, which of course is an over-simplification of his accomplishments and his character.  At least Griffith did a good job of casting the role.  Renowned character actor Walter Huston (father of legendary filmmaker John Huston) is an ideal choice for the role, giving Lincoln an air of respectability, while at the same time making him relatable as down to earth leader of men.  He also gets the look of the character right, very much capturing the stern faced man we all know from the photographs and the 5 dollar bill.  But, as good as Huston’s performance is, he still can’t salvage the historical inaccuracies that plague the entire movie.  While Griffith attempted to atone for the sins of The Birth of a Nation with this favorable portrait of Abraham Lincoln, one can’t help but see his own pre-built prejudices creeping in and still sanitizing the horrible racist legacy of the Confederate States by burying the reason the Civil War was fought in the first place.  Abraham deserved a better film treatment than a hollow summary of the man’s life told by someone who was trying to use the film to whitewash his own toxic legacy in Hollywood.

HENRY FONDA in YOUNG MR. LINCOLN (1939)

Finally, we get a portrayal of Abraham Lincoln that is true to the man’s legacy while at the same time is compelling as a great piece of cinema.  Director John Ford wisely chooses to not tell the whole life’s story of Lincoln, and instead focuses on a specific period of time that informs us about the man who Lincoln was.  As the title suggests, it’s a movie about Abraham’s early years, specifically the period of time in which he was practicing law in the town of Springfield, Illinois.  In that period of time, we see Lincoln grow into the compassionate defender of the innocent that we know he’ll soon be in a racially and politically charged world that’s about to explode in the years ahead.  It also covers his early love life, including his courtship with Ann Rutledge who sadly dies too soon and eventually leads him to his marriage to Mary Todd thereafter.  Ford clearly has a reverence for Abraham Lincoln’s story, but he wisely refrains from making Lincoln too saint like.  He managed to strike the right balance with the character of Lincoln by casting the perfect actor to play him; Henry Fonda.  Fonda’s folksy everyman charm works perfectly with the character, and he perfectly captures the tender soul of Lincoln while also giving him the commanding presence of a man who will stand up for what is right.  It’s the kind of performance that Fonda would continue to portray in most of his role over the rest of his career, including The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and 12 Angry Men (1957).  While Young Mr. Lincoln was not his first role, it was certainly the movie that propelled him towards becoming an A-list movie star.  The movie itself is also seen as a cinematic classic, and without a doubt one of the most beloved films centered around the story of the iconic American figure.  After several films beforehand that either distorted or minimized the legacy of Mr. Lincoln, Young Mr. Lincoln was the movie that we really needed to help remind America the important and essential mark that he made on our nation.

RAYMOND MASSEY in ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS (1940)

Released the following year after Young Mr. Lincoln, this equally reverent portrayal of the man picks up right where the last movie left off.  Henry Fonda’s portrayal of Lincoln showed us the young man just beginning to find his footing as a lawyer and discovering where his convictions lie.  Abe Lincoln in Illinois takes us through the next stage, showing us how the lawyer became a politician and then ultimately the President of the United States.  The movie is much more focused on showing us Lincoln the orator; the man who could inspire the people with his command of reason and intelligence.  Actor Raymond Massey gives Lincoln a big booming voice, which definitely fits with the idea of Lincoln being a commanding speaker, especially in the film’s recreation of the famed Lincoln Douglas debates.  Massey may not have the folksy innocence of Fonda’s portrayal, giving his version of Lincoln a more operatic presence, but he still treats the character with this respectable air.  The movie also gives us perhaps the most historically accurate account of Lincoln’s life up this point.  While Young Mr. Lincoln was true in spirit to the man, the movie itself was an imagined portrayal of what his early life might have been like.  Abe Lincoln in Illinois stays very close to the actual events that shaped Lincoln into who he was, albeit with some typical Hollywood embellishment.  Watchin the two movies together actually does work as a way of giving the viewer a fuller account of Lincoln’s life, each one complimenting the other.  Given that so much is known about Lincoln’s time in office, it’s nice to see that two very strong older films were devoted to showing us the parts of his life that we know less of, which helps us to understand how he became the man who would guide our nation through it’s most perilous era.

BENJAMIN WALKER in ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER (2012)

Now, jumping ahead several decades, we go from some of the most honest, historically honest depictions of Abraham Lincoln to something that is just pure fantasy.  Based on a history/fantasy mash-up novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is exactly what the title infers; a story about the 16th president having an alternate career as a killer of vampires.  This came out at around a time when these horror infused mash-ups were gaining popularity, which also included another Grahame-Smith novel titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which itself was turned into a 2016 movie.  The movie was directed by Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov, who had gained popularity with his previous vampire flicks Nightwatch (2004) and Daywatch (2006).  Seeing this foreign filmmaker deliver his own twisted spin on an American icon was going to be interesting to see, though the end result was unfortunately underwhelming.  The movie never really lives up to the lunacy of it’s premise, and instead strangely tries to play things safe when it comes to the violence and the overall plot.  The casting of Benjamin Walker was an interesting choice, given that he had gained fame on Broadway for portraying another American president in the musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.  The statuesque Walker does create a physically imposing figure in Abraham Lincoln.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t make Lincoln anything other than a stock action hero, which is not only a let down for the zany premise of the story, but also for the persona of Lincoln himself.  It makes sense that Lincoln would be quite good at killing vampires with an axe, given that he was raised in the woods where tree-cutting was an essential skill.  The movie should have been either far more scarier or far more absurd than the standard, boring action film we ended up with.  It’s weird to say this about a movie where Abraham Lincoln is shown chopping up vampires with an axe, but Lincoln deserved better.

DANIEL DAY-LEWIS in LINCOLN (2012)

Of all the portrayals of Abraham Lincoln that have made it to the big screen, this is likely going to be the one that people will think of first.  Irish actor Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of the Lincoln in the 2012 film directed by Steven Spielberg may very well be the definitive one in all of cinema.  It’s the only performance of Lincoln that has won it’s actor an Oscar (a third for Day-Lewis, making him the current reigning champ).  Daniel took his method acting to the extreme and not only transformed himself into the persona of Abraham Lincoln, but also lived in his shoes throughout the filming of the movie.  There was a great amount of effort in the actors part to get every detail of who Lincoln was on screen, with Daniel Day-Lewis even researching the tenor of voice that people who knew him described him as having.  While we don’t know 100% for sure what the real life Abraham Lincoln sounded like, Daniel’s performance feel like it could be the closest that seen yet to being true to history.  And while the Lincoln in this film is definitely at the heart of the story, the film is also about a specific period of time that was crucial to the shaping of America.  The film centers on the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution which banned slavery and the incredible maneuvering that Lincoln made as President to see it successfully pass through Congress, despite fierce opposition.  It’s a textbook example of the right way to do a biopic of a historical figure, which is to center the story on a specific moment in their life and dramatize it to it’s fullest rather than condense an entire life into one 2 hour story.  It makes for a more interesting and compelling story.  And it gives us a more intimate look at Lincoln himself, as we see him struggle through the twists and turns of this very important moment in time.  It’s also a great reversal of the early D.W. Griffith films that we have a movie that firmly establishes the Emancipation of the slaves across America to be Lincoln’s crowning achievement.  Both Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner create a compelling step by step dramatization about what it took to make Lincoln’s dream come true, and Daniel Day-Lewis brings the man to life in a way that feels like we’ve gone back in time to be in the presence of the real man himself.

BRAYDON DENNEY in THE BETTER ANGELS (2014)

This film delivers a story about Abraham Lincoln unlike anything else we have seen in cinematic history.  With a title taken from the famous quote delivered by Lincoln in his first Inaugural Address, The Better Angels takes us way back in history to show us the earliest part of Lincoln’s life, when he was still living with his family on their homestead in the Indiana wilderness.  Here, Lincoln is a young man between the age of 9-10, discovering his identity and observing the sights and sounds that would motivate his future actions.  The movie itself has a dream like atmosphere that is less plot driven and more like cinematic poetry akin to the films of Terence Malick.  Not surprisingly, Malick was a producer on this film, with his frequent editor A.J. Edwards making his directorial debut with this film, and it’s clear that the influence trickled down.  The film is also shot with some gorgeous looking black and white cinematography, which reinforces the film’s historic time capsule feel.  At the center of the film is the portrayal of a very young Lincoln by actor Braydon Denney.  Denney’s performance doesn’t reveal much of any indication of the man Lincoln would end up being.  If you didn’t know going in that you are watching a movie about the early years of Abraham Lincoln, you would think that this was just another coming of age film, but with an artistic flair to it.  Denney does well with his depiction of a young Abe.  It’s a very grounded portrayal, and it helps to make him feel like a real person living in this historical time period.  You don’t really learn much about Lincoln himself in this film; the movie is mostly just there to showcase what kind of life Lincoln must have had.  As an artistic rendering on true history, it does create a provocative portrait of Lincoln’s upbringing.  We know the least about this time period in Lincoln’s history, the only accounts being taken from Lincoln’s own autobiographical writings.  We can only imagine what his early years may have been like through evidence of how people lived back then, and the movie does a fair job of that too.  So many films about Lincoln use their time to build up his legend, but his film does the interesting action of using his own personal experience to inform us of the kind of life that would shape someone into a legend in the beginning.

These seven examples of Abraham Lincoln’s presence on the big screen are honestly just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the many different appearances that he has made across all media.  There are countless made-for-TV movies and miniseries that are either about Lincoln or include him as an important figure.  He’s also shown up in several different films as a supporting player, including a silly cameo in the time travel comedy Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989).  Abraham Lincoln today still stands tall as one of our greatest historical icons, and is almost unanimously regarded as our greatest Commander in Chief.  No other man achieved so much in his brief time as President of the United States.  He secured the future of this country by commanding the nation through it’s greatest crises, the Civil War, and brought it to a worthwhile end by defeating the Confederacy and reuniting the sates.  But of course his greatest legacy was getting the 13th Amendment passed and adopted into the Consitution, ending the barbarism of slavery in America once and for all, and emancipating the millions of slaves who were now free to live as equal citizens in American society.  At least that was the hope, and sadly it would take nearly another century for equal rights to become enshrined into law, and even today the scars of slavery and the Jim Crow laws that followed still run deep in society.  The good thing about movies that celebrate the life of Lincoln is that they remind us of the example of his leadership and how it still inspires us all to appeal to our “better angels” in society today.  America still falls short of where it should be with regards to race relations, but the example that Lincoln left behind hopefully drives us to be better and to work to solve the problems of racial division that persist to this day.  The best portrayals of Lincoln, from Henry Fonda’s tenderness to Daniel Day-Lewis’ intensity all have that inspiration in common.  Far more than four score and seven years have we seen Lincoln be a guiding presence in our cinematic history, and hopefully he is a figure that continues to inspire future filmmakers and audiences in the years ahead.

Movie Reviews

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – Review

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When we look at the whole career thus far of Tim Burton, there is a definable split between the early years and the later years.  When Tim Burton was first starting out, he was a unique voice unlike any other in Hollywood.  He cut his teeth as an animator at Disney before expanding his talents in the realm of live action film-making.  He would get his first shot at directing when LA-based comedian Paul Reubens selected him to make a movie adaptation for his Pee Wee Herman character.  Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) certainly showed off the great creative mind that Burton had, but it would be his follow-up that people consider to be the first true Burton movie.  Beetlejuice (1988) was a true original.  It was bizarre and eerie, but in a way that was still appealing to a mass audience.  It was also irreverently hilarious in a way that many movies of it’s kind in the 80’s were too afraid of being.  Creating a oddball twist on the haunted house sub-genre, Tim Burton created this imaginative world where life and afterlife intersect.  The peaceful serenity of a small New England town becomes a gateway to a strange and otherworldly purgatory with “newly dead” tenants waiting for their turn to be processed through underworld bureaucracy.  And at it’s center is a ghoulish prankster who is too much to handle in both realities.  The titular “ghost with the most” Beetlejuice features remarkably briefly in the movie (less than 20 minutes), and yet he is the centerpiece of the whole movie.  Michael Keaton, the actor who played him, had been around for a while, but Beetlejuice was the character that catapulted him to super-stardom.  If Keaton hadn’t shown off his incredible talent as a performer as Beetlejuice, would Tim Burton have had the confidence to cast him as the caped crusader in his next film, Batman (1989), even when everyone else thought he was crazy.  Burton would have eventually found his footing as a filmmaker, but because of Beetlejuice, he was able to make a name for himself early without having to compromise his vision, and because of that, Burton movies are a category of their own.

But, like with most other filmmakers, it becomes difficult to try to live up to your own legacy.  That’s why the latter years of Tim Burton’s career have been a little more hit and miss.  When he was a much hungrier young filmmaker, he was more willing to take chances to prove himself.  That’s why that early run of movies feel so creatively vibrant.  From Pee Wee, to Beetlejuice, to Batman, to Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Ed Wood (1994), there was a sense of Tim Burton using his talents to transport audiences into another world that only he could imagine.  But, the latter half of his career seems to have lost a bit of that creative spark.  Movies like Planet of the Apes (2001), Alice in Wonderland (2010), or Dark Shadows (2012) feel more like parodies of a Tim Burton film rather than genuine artistic expressions.  As the Burton name has gained it’s reputation, so has the interest of Hollywood in using that to appeal to audiences.  And it seems like Tim Burton has become more inclined to bend to Hollywood’s will rather than them bending to his.  There are occasional flashes where Burton makes something that he feels genuinely invested in; like the Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) musical adaptation, or the Margaret Keane biopic Big Eyes (2014).  He’s also shown an interest in animation that has proved fruitful, going back to his dream project of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and continued through his adaptation of his own live action short, Frankenweenie (2012).  But, even still, he’ll still return to the Hollywood machine and make a soulless project like the Dumbo (2019) remake for Disney.  But, he recently found renewed creative and commercial success with the popular Netflix series Wednesday, which he produced and directed half the episodes for.  The home run that that show turned out to be is giving long time Burton fans hope that he is finding his creative mojo again, which is helping to build anticipation for his next project.  And what that project has turned out to be is a long in development sequel to the movie that defined his career from the start; the highly anticipated Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024). The only question is whether or not the world is ready to bring this ghoul back from the dead again, or is it dead on arrival?

Set in the present day, decades after the events of the first film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice catches us up quickly with what has been going on with Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder).  Her ability to speak with ghosts has turned her into a bit of a celebrity, with her own ghost hunting show, produced by her manager and romantic partner Rory (Justin Theroux).  Lydia’s show is interrupted one day when she receives the news from her quirky stepmother Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara) that her father Charles has died. The news hits her hard, and it also means that she’ll have to return to the home that she thought she left behind years ago.  In addition, she has to break the news to her estranged daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega) in order to get her to come along.  Meanwhile, in the Netherworld, a malevolent ghost with the power to devour the souls of the dead named Delores (Monica Bellucci) has arisen from her exiled imprisonment and seeks to take revenge on the man who killed her; a familiar ghost by the name of Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton).  Beetlejuice is desperate to steer clear of his soul-sucking old flame Delores, and he seeks the help of a ghost cop named Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), who was an actor who played cops in his past life.  While Beetlejuice is on guard, Lydia finds it hard to balance the new life she has made with the life she once had, as it increasingly begins to intrude more with her return home.  Rory is also pushing her to make important life decisions that she is clearly not ready to make, such as getting married, and it’s creating even more of a wedge between her and Astrid.  In the midst of all this, she is having traumatic flashbacks to her original encounter with Beetlejuice, to the point where she’s starting to see him everywhere she goes.  Is she on an inevitable collision course with Beetlejuice once again, and is it possible that this time he may need her help more than she needs his.

A sequel to Beetlejuice has been in off and on development for over thirty years, and given that lengthy span of time, it’s a wonder that Burton and Company managed to actually get it to finally happen.  In many ways, the idea of a sequel seemed to be treated like a joke, with the movie at one point being called Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian. Obviously that version never happened, and I imagine nothing of that original treatment made it into this sequel, with Tim Burton opting to not stray too far from the original recipe.  Beetlejuice Beetlejuice more or less covers much of the same ground as the original, which for many legacy sequels tends to be where they fall apart creatively.  Thankfully, this sequel manages to avoid most of the pitfalls that a long in the making follow-up falls into.  While Tim Burton is revisiting the same settings of the first film, he doesn’t turn Beetlejuice Beetlejuice into an endless string of memberberries.  There are a lot of new ideas thrown into the mix that builds upon the world of the first film rather than just exploiting it for cheap nostalgia. The most pleasing thing about this movie is that it’s the first Burton film in a long while that actually feels like a Burton film.  I think this is because he’s not working with an adaptation this time of someone else’s work; like a book adaptation or a Disney remake.  This time he’s working with a universe of his own creation and is allowed to expand upon it and even poke fun at it a little.  What is especially pleasing is that it shows that Tim Burton is still capable of making a movie like this after a decade or so of feeling like he’s just been coasting on his past glory.  Given the special place that Beetlejuice holds in his legacy as a filmmaker, you can see how he wanted to approach this movie with a bit more resolve to get it right, almost like he’s trying to prove himself once again just like he had with the original.

But, this movie is also far from perfect as well.  The big problem with the movie is that it’s unfocused.  There are half a dozen plots going on in this movie, and Tim Burton doesn’t seem to know which one he wants us to focus on.  There’s the Lydia/Astrid storyline, the Beetlejuice/ Delores storyline, a subplot with Astrid getting to know a local boy in town, Lydia’s trauma coming back to haunt her, and a few others thrown into the mix.  The problem is that none of those stories intersect in an organic way, and they all keep butting into each other.  When one storyline finally hits it’s footing, it will be undercut by another storyline, and in some cases, storyline’s that have potential will suddenly be dropped in favor of another.  The movie is missing a traditional three act structure, and is instead a bunch of fun but loosely connected scenes strung together in the hopes that it tells a cohesive story.  The biggest problems with this occur when it robs the effectiveness of the character development within the story.  Delores for example is a really interesting character, with a fantastic introduction scene.  But then she disappears for most of the movie, only becoming an active threat once again towards the end.  Too much of the other subplots got in the way of Delores’ development, and it lessens her presence as a villainous threat in the story.  The original film may not have been the tidiest of plots either, but it had a consistent through-line in it, with the Maitlands (played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in that movie) being effective audience surrogates whose eyes are the ones we follow along with as they observe the weirdness of Beetlejuice’s world.  They were the cornerstones on which the rest of the movie could focus on.  This sequel seems to not know which character it should be focusing on; Lydia, Astrid, or Beetlejuice.  It’s the thing that makes this movie fall well short of it’s predecessor, even while hitting the right notes when it comes to the visuals and the humor.

One thing that certainly is pleasing to see with this film is the absence of CGI in the effects.  It really seems like Tim Burton made an effort to return to his roots with the way he made this sequel.  Instead of relying heavily on computer animation to recreate the world of Beetlejuice, Burton instead resorts to old school practical effects that feel like the ones he would’ve used back in his early days as a filmmaker.  For one example, the sandworms that make a return from the first film are animated in stop-motion.  This gives them a more dynamic presence than how they appeared in the first movie, which was done with puppets and models, while at the same time helping to retain the hand crafted effect that Tim Burton is striving for with this film.  There’s also some incredible make-up and puppetry work that help to make the more cartoonish moments of the movie feel genuinely in line with the original film’s low budget charm.  But, even with the drive to do everything with practical effects, Tim Burton doesn’t cut back on the scale of his film either.  The full practical sets of this movie are expansive and pretty incredible to look at as well. They definitely feel in line with the visual style that we all are familiar with when it comes to Tim Burton.  Some of the corridors still retain that off-kilter aesthetic that he’s known for, especially the ones with uneven floors.  And you can tell when watching the movie that these are real sets on real soundstages, with the minimalist of green screen enhancements.  These Netherworld sets also pair nicely with the actual, on location shooting that they did for the film, bringing a beautiful juxtaposition to the film between the world of the living and that of the dead.

Of course, the thing that matters most is how well the cast is able to perform in this imaginative Tim Burton world.  Michael Keaton and Tim Burton go way back, with their shared history obviously going back to the first.  And while this isn’t a long in the making reunion between the two, since Keaton had a part in his Dumbo remake in 2019, it is still very pleasing to see these two working together again on a character that matters a lot to both of their careers. Of course, even with the 36 year gap, Keaton doesn’t miss a beat playing Beetlejuice.  It’s a part that Keaton, whose in his 70’s now, can still play despite the passage of time, given that the character is literally a decaying corpse.  It’s also pleasing that he gets a lot more screen time in this film, though I still believe it’s a lot less than it should be.  Winona Ryder also gets to explore a bit more of Lydia’s character this time around.  It’s interesting how she is a much different person this time around now that she’s a mother, but at the same time, you still see the rebellious little goth girl underneath the surface.  The movie wouldn’t be the same without both Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder both on board, so it is pleasing to see them both say yes to being in this sequel.  Jenna Ortega became an audience favorite with her acclaimed performance as Wednesday Addams in the Wednesday series, and it’s nice to see Tim Burton bring her on board this project as well.  Unfortunately, there isn’t much to the character of Astrid, other than her being an angsty teen.  Jenna does her best with what she can with the role, but Astrid unfortunately is the least interesting character in the movie.  The always great Catherine O’Hara consistently steals every scene she’s in here, and it’s great to see her return as well.  Her throwaway one-liners may be the highlight of the screenplay all on their own, and she delivers them perfectly.  And while stars like Willem Dafoe and Monica Bellucci are sadly sidelined for much of the film, they still bring a strong presence to every scene that they are in.  The only actor I feel is wasted is Justin Theroux as Rory.  He’s a one-note character that sadly Theroux isn’t able to do much with, and in the end, it becomes an unfortunately underwhelming performance.  But, the highlights of the cast are the ones we were all hoping to see return, and Keaton, Ryder and O’Hara all look like they are having a blast being back in this world.  Burton certainly likes working with the same people over and over again in his movies, and it’s pleasing to see how far after the fact that his troop of stars are willing to get right back into this quirky world again.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is nowhere in the same league as the original film, but it’s not exactly going to reflect poorly on it either.  It’s flawed, but still entertaining enough to be worthy of being a continuation of the story.  The most positive thing about it is that it’s Tim Burton finding himself once again comfortable with making the kinds of movies that he made in his early career.  While I don’t think we will ever see him make a film again that hits the same way that his early films did, this sequel is certainly the closest he’s gotten in quite some time.  The movie is very funny in all the right ways, the visuals are distinctly Burton-esque, and there was an effort made to use real, practical effects in the making of this film.  All of that is a welcome change from the way Tim Burton was making movies over the last couple of years.  We may be witnessing a new, third phase of Burton’s career starting to emerge with this and the Wednesday series.  It would appear that Burton is no longer coasting on any big studio gig that he can get (though this film is still certainly that too).  He’s now starting to seek challenges again as a filmmaker, and trying to build upon his legacy rather than compete with it.  My hope is that he applies some of that renewed creativity into something original.  That’s the thing that we have been missing from Tim Burton over the last couple decades; an original concept brought to life on film.  Even still, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice should still prove to be an audience pleaser.  Michael Keaton slips right back into Beetlejuice’s striped suit just like he’s never left, and it looks like he’s happy to be back, as does Winona Ryder.  A lot of things had to happen to make this sequel possible.  It helps that both of it’s stars have seen big career comebacks in the last decade, with Keaton earning an Oscar nomination for Birdman (2014) and Winona getting a boost from her role in the hit series Stranger Things.  Their hot streak, plus the addition of Jenna Ortega to the mix is almost certain to drive audiences to see this movie in massive numbers.  But hopefully, the biggest beneficiary will be Tim Burton, who needs his own Renaissance as a filmmaker.  While far from a perfect sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice still delivers enough entertainment that’ll keep this franchise alive and far from dead and buried.

Rating: 7.5/10