Comedy
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (12A)
Review: At the beginning of director Tim Burton’s second slice of his macabre comedy, the hypnotic melody of Danny Elfman’s orchestral score flirts with lyrics from Donna Summer’s discofied rendition of MacArthur Park. Someone has indeed left the cake out in the rain and it’s half-baked. Drizzled in enough nostalgia to make the most fervent Burton fan choke and splutter, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice exhumes original cast members including Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara for a shambolic road trip through the worlds of the living and the dead.
The likeness of disgraced actor Jeffrey Jones, who originally portrayed patriarch Charles Deetz, is realised as stop-motion animation for one of the sequel’s splashier moments, pointedly killing off his character in bloodthirsty fashion. Screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar achieve fleeting greatness – bio-exorcist Betelgeuse’s attempt to get in touch with his inner child is lip-smackingly disgusting. However, the duo are largely content to convene with ghosts of past glories and shoehorn a new arrangement of Jamaican folk song Day-O into one mournful scene.
A slapdash approach to detailed storytelling is exemplified when psychic mediator Lydia Deetz (Ryder) is asked by her truculent teenage daughter, Astrid (Ortega), if the ghosts of Adam and Barbara Maitland still haunt the attic of the family home. “We found a loophole and they moved on,” Lydia sombrely explains. “How convenient,” deadpans her unimpressed offspring. Monica Bellucci is squandered as Betelgeuse’s soul-sucking ex-wife – a crime considering the campy wickedness that Burton lavishes on her entrance to the fray, replete with a rousing burst of the Bee Gees. Tragedy, indeed.
The passing of Charles Deetz woos multimedia artist wife Delia (O’Hara), daughter Lydia (Ryder) and granddaughter Astrid (Ortega) back to the close-knit community of Winter River for an overwrought funeral service. Lydia’s latest beau, TV producer Rory (Justin Theroux), lends moral support as tensions flare between the generations and Astrid dismisses her mother’s unwavering belief in the spirit world as the ramblings of a delusional fantasist. When loose lips summon Betelgeuse (Keaton) from his current position as an Afterlife Care Manager, the politically incorrect trickster reignites his desire to walk down the aisle with Lydia so he can finally wreak havoc in the mortal realm.
Alas, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice isn’t so good they named it twice. Ryder and Ortega feign intergenerational strife before an inevitable reconciliation, while O’Hara’s exuberant theatrics occasionally slip into Moira from Schitt’s Creek. Willem Dafoe’s B-movie actor turned ghost detective, who “made” his name portraying grizzled big screen cop Frank Hardballer, is an amusing addition but he is surplus to dramatic requirements. The miasma of eye-popping practical effects and whoop-inducing set design, which have become trademarks of Burton’s oeuvre, are almost worth the price of admission. This rain-soaked cake is impeccably decorated.
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Romance
Firebrand (15)
Review: A turbulent chapter in British history is divorced and ultimately beheaded from fact as celebrated Brazilian director Karim Ainouz makes his English-language debut with a handsomely crafted period drama based on Elizabeth Fremantle’s novel The Queen’s Gambit. Adapted for the screen by sisters Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth with additional writing by Rosanne Flynn, Firebrand smoulders for two hours but never truly catches light despite a thunderous turn from Jude Law as an ailing and bloated King Henry VIII. It’s an eye-catching performance of glowering, unapologetic misogyny and male privilege, stripped bare of vanity as his overweight monarch heaves nosily atop current spouse Katherine Parr (Alicia Vikander) to further the royal bloodline.
Law’s wild, dangerous mood swings contrast with Vikander’s cool, measured embodiment of a regent, who hopes to leverage the king’s fickle affections as she anxiously births a male heir. “I believe that I was chosen by God to get the king to change his will,” naively proclaims the queen. Courtly intrigue and betrayal, orchestrated by a privileged few desperate to cling on to the little power they wield, sets in motion a murderous plot that resolves awkwardly in the film’s closing moments. Prosaic voiceover narration teases Parr as a trailblazer of female empowerment, who defied the will of the establishment, but Ainouz’s anaemic picture does not bear this out with fervour.
In the mid-16th century, King Henry VIII (Law) languishes on the throne with bandaged legs to conceal his festering ulcers, flanked by sixth wife, and counting, Katherine Parr (Vikander). She warmly attends to Princess Elizabeth (Junia Rees) and Prince Edward (Patrick Buckley), surviving children of her predecessors Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, as the winds of change blow through “a rotten, blood-soaked kingdom”. Protestant preacher Anne Askew (Erin Doherty) sermonises revolt in defiance of a religious establishment led by bishop Stephen Gardiner (Simon Russell Beale).
“I’m God’s deputy. I won’t be patron to heretics!” snarls the King in response. Katherine secretly attends one of Anne’s gatherings with her loyal ladies of the bedchamber, Cat (Ruby Bentall), Dot (Maia Jemmett) and Ellen (Bryony Hannah). When wicked whispers circulate that the queen was seen in the company of heretics, advisers pour poison in Henry’s ear and Jane Seymour’s brothers Edward (Eddie Marsan) and Thomas (Sam Riley) consider their options.
Firebrand boasts impressive production design and costumes but Ainouz’s film is a slog and the final act feels particularly laboured. The bellicose bombast of Law and the muted manoeuvring of Vikander are fittingly awkward bedfellows. As depicted here, Katherine is her own worst enemy and relies on the benevolence or recklessness of others rather than her own cunning to worm her way into an unlikely winning position. The queen’s gambit is a lucky roll of the dice.
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