Tim Burton returns to the afterlife with his sequel ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,’ a return to form 35 years after his original dark fantasy comedy horror film.
Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice) is back as the titular ghost alongside Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) and Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara), the original haunted family. They are joined by Jenna Ortega, playing Lydia’s daughter Astrid, as well as Justin Theroux, Willem Dafoe, and Monica Bellucci.
The film picks up in the present day and sees Lydia, now all grown up, putting her abilities of seeing ghosts to use as a talk show host who explores paranormal experiences. She has a distant relationship with her daughter Astrid, very much like she once had with her own mother in the original film, who does not believe in the afterlife that her mother’s fame is based around.
The three generations of Deetz women are reunited after a death in the family that also sees the return of Beetlejuice who once again causes chaos and desires to marry Lydia to come back to life.
What ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ gets right is returning to the world and tone established in the first film. All of the returning cast slips right back into their roles and the story picks up in a way that mostly makes sense given where everyone ended in the first film.
The one glaring absence is the lack of the dead couple that we followed in the original film played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis. They are quickly explained in the film to have been able to move on from the Deetz’s house that they were trapped in and not much else is said.
The afterlife is given a bit of a facelift, keeping a lot of what was seen in the first movie, but with a bit more flare and fun. New gimmicks are added to bring even more life to the afterlife.
What really stands out though is Beetlejuice himself who has much more screen time in this film, and although not every scene makes complete sense with him, it is always a delight to see what antics he is up to next.
Despite Michael Keaton’s incredible performance as Beetlejuice that steals the show every time he is on screen, the film itself is unfortunately a bit of a cluttered mess. As the movie progresses the amount of side plots that get started keeps adding up with new ones even appearing well into the third act.
None of these are terrible on their own, but with all of them included none of them get their time to shine. This issue is most evident with Monica Bellucci’s character of Delores who is only sprinkled in throughout the movie, so the audience remembers her for a crucial scene that ultimately falls flat because the setup was so minimal.
Ultimately, the film feels like a desperate attempt to include every idea they had on the board. Although it might have seemed like a good idea to do this with how long it took to get a sequel, it ended up creating an imbalance that resonated through the whole film.
