Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Review: The Ghost with the Most Is Back

Some characters require an actor to rediscover a particular voice or physical performance after decades away.

Michael Keaton appears to need approximately five seconds.

The moment Beetlejuice arrives, the manic energy returns with him.

Keaton doesn't play the character as though he's protecting an iconic performance from the 1980s. He throws himself straight back into the chaos, delivering lines, expressions and physical comedy with the same sense that absolutely anything could happen next.

Crucially, the film doesn't make the mistake of turning him into a conventional leading man.

Betelgeuse works because he's disruptive.

You don't necessarily want him around permanently. You want somebody to accidentally summon him, immediately regret it, and then spend the rest of the movie trying to contain the consequences.

Keaton understands that perfectly.

Casting Jenna Ortega as Lydia Deetz's daughter almost feels inevitable.

Astrid isn't simply Wednesday Addams transported into another Tim Burton production, though. Her scepticism towards Lydia's supernatural experiences creates an interesting reversal of the relationship Lydia once had with the adults around her.

Lydia grew up knowing ghosts existed.

Any doesn't convince Astrid.

That gives Winona Ryder and Ortega something more substantial to play than a straightforward nostalgic handover from one generation to another.

Ortega also possesses exactly the kind of dry, understated presence that works against the increasingly ridiculous supernatural events surrounding her.

She doesn't need to force herself into Burton's universe.

She already looks completely at home there.

While Betelgeuse gets the biggest entrances, much of the sequel's heart still belongs to the Deetz family.

Winona Ryder's Lydia is particularly interesting because the strange teenager from the original film has become an adult whose entire identity remains connected to the supernatural.

She's changed, but she hasn't entirely escaped the world that shaped her.

Catherine O'Hara, meanwhile, is magnificent.

Delia Deetz remains gloriously self-involved, theatrical and capable of making almost any situation about herself. O'Hara understands precisely how large the performance can become without completely breaking the character.

The three generations of Deetz women give the sequel its strongest foundation.

For all the ghosts and monsters surrounding them, this is ultimately a story about a deeply unusual family attempting to understand one another.

The greatest pleasure of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice may simply be watching Tim Burton make something that looks unmistakably like a Tim Burton movie.

The afterlife is once again filled with grotesque characters, bizarre bureaucracies and visual jokes that seem to have escaped from somebody's particularly inventive nightmare.

Practical effects and deliberately artificial-looking creations help preserve the handmade personality that made the original so memorable.

Not everything needs to look realistic.

In fact, Beetlejuice would probably stop being Beetlejuice if it did.

Much of the supernatural imagery has a tactile quality that makes the movie feel refreshingly different from blockbusters where every impossible environment has been polished into digital perfection.

Burton's world should have rough edges.

Thankfully, plenty remain.

The movie's biggest weakness is also connected to its greatest strength.

There is a lot happening here.

Characters arrive. Subplots appear. Supernatural rules are introduced. New threats emerge. Old relationships return. Another strange creature or visual gag seems to be waiting around every corner.

Some of those ideas are terrific.

Others feel like they belong to storylines that needed either more room or considerably less.

The original Beetlejuice was hardly restrained, but its relatively simple central premise gave Burton's imagination something solid to bounce against.

The sequel occasionally feels as though several potential Beetlejuice sequels have been squeezed into the same movie.

It keeps things entertaining, but not always coherent.

Legacy sequels can become exhausting when every returning object, line or character is presented as though the audience should immediately applaud.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice certainly isn't shy about reminding us of the original.

But there's enough new weirdness here to stop the movie becoming a feature-length reunion.

The returning characters have changed. Astrid introduces a new perspective. Burton expands the afterlife rather than simply revisiting every location exactly as audiences remember it.

And most importantly, the movie understands that nostalgia alone didn't make Beetlejuice entertaining.

It was the unpredictability.

The sequel works best whenever it remembers that.

Is it as good as the 1988 original?

No.

But perhaps expecting lightning to strike in precisely the same strange place twice was never realistic.

What Beetlejuice Beetlejuice does manage is something arguably more important: it gives these characters a reason to exist again without completely sanding away everything that made them unusual.

Michael Keaton is still hilarious. Winona Ryder slips naturally back into Lydia. Catherine O'Hara threatens to steal virtually every scene she enters, and Jenna Ortega proves an ideal addition to the Deetz family.

It's chaotic.

It's uneven.

It's occasionally ridiculous.

And when Tim Burton's imagination is firing properly, it's an absolute blast.