Jimmy Webb must be tickled by the fact that somebody successfully concocted a plot point to the nonsensical lyrics he wrote for “MacArthur Park.”
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| When the escalating supernatural chaos subsides for a bit, Lydia (Winona Ryder, right) and her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) enjoy a bonding moment while looking at an old photo album. |
All the familiar elements are once again in play, from the orchestral drum-beat of Danny Elfman’s title theme, to cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos’ disorienting opening montage, which eerily blurs the line between bucolic, small-town community and a tabletop miniature of same.
Burton and his writers — Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith — have enhanced the ookiness and playful gore, while also adding a degree of danger. The first film may have been all in good (if zany) fun, but this one has a genuinely menacing undertone.
Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) has parlayed her earlier experiences into an enormously successful media career, as a professional ghost-chaser. Her manager, Rory (Justin Theroux), is an insufferably snooty fashion plate who fancies himself the trendiest and most sensitive guy on the planet. He’s also in love with Lydia, which — to say the least — seems an odd pairing.
The unexpected death of Lydia’s father (played by Jeffrey Jones, in the first film) prompts her return to the long-shuttered family home in bucolic Winter River. She’s joined by her mother, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), and moody, rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega, immediately recognized from television’s Wednesday). The girl is all but estranged from her mother, and with good reason, having been essentially ignored while Lydia focused on her flourishing career.
Astrid has an additional, quite understandably reason for her sullen melancholy; her father — Lydia’s husband — long ago disappeared under mysterious circumstances. As a result, Astrid now has lost both beloved father figures.
On top of which, as a dedicated activist and environmentalist, the pragmatic girl doesn’t believe in ghosts. (She’s in for a surprise...)
Meanwhile, in Afterlife Central, way down below, the balefully malevolent Delores (Monica Bellucci) reassembles herself, after having been chopped into bits centuries earlier: easily the most grotesquely ghastly sequence Burton ever concocted. Turns out she was Beetlejuice’s lover, way back in the day, until their unhealthy relationship hit an, um, unfortunate snag.
Now that she’s back, and possessed of über-creepy soul-sucking powers, she’s determined to pay Beetlejuice back in kind ... and woe to those who get in her way.
comes to mind: It finds Irene Dunne, long ago given up for dead in a shipwreck, returning to civilization after seven years to discover that former husband Cary Grant has remarried Gail Patrick. Things get more complicated when Grant, still deeply in love with Dunne, learns that she spent those seven years on a deserted island in the sole company of fellow survivor Randolph Scott.