Jack and I liked this sequel to the 1998 fantasy dark comedy, with original cast members Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, and Catherine O'Hara–playing the same roles but older–joined by Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, and Monica Bellucci, among others. The excellent special effects have evolved in the passing decades.
I've been a big fan of composer Danny Elfman since the mid 80s and have several of his soundtracks in my music library. Yeah, I'm old. I went from vinyl to cassettes to CDs to mp3s and, although I am streaming this latest soundtrack on Apple Music as I write, I have a lot of digital files, including the 1998 Beetlejuice score, at my fingertips. Jack and I both loved the first movie and saw it separately years before we met. Classic songs from the new movie are also available on Apple Music, including a boys' choir singing Day-O.
The movie has Burton's signature dark look, shot by Haris Zambarloukos, partly in the original location of East Corinth, Vermont. Fun fact: I visited there briefly in 1970 and it's a whole story. Write me and I'll tell you about it.
Ryder was last blogged for The Dilemma, Keaton for Spider-Man: Homecoming, O'Hara for Elemental, Theroux for On the Basis of Sex, Bellucci for Spectre, Burton for Dumbo, Grahame-Smith for Dark Shadows (also a Burton joint), and Zambarloukos for Belfast.
Ortega, now 22, made a big splash as the title role in eight episodes of Wednesday but has been acting for twelve years, including playing young Jane in thirty episodes of Jane the Virgin. Gough & Millar co-created Wednesday and have a bunch of other credits, including screen story for Spider-Man 2 (2004).
Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences aren't summoning many spirits with averages of 76 and 79%. We rented it on November 2.
UPDATE: Amy tells me that, after we both watched in it our respective homes, we agreed that "there were too many plotlines and it was overall too busy." Her memory is better than mine, so I am changing "really liked" to "liked," because I did enjoy the production values and the acting, especially Ryder's and O'Hara's.
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