Movie review: 'Beetlejuice' sequel delivers whimsical fun

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice , in theaters Friday, is a creative and amusing return to the afterlife comedy world of the 1988 movie. It sometimes stretches the franchise to justify itself, but it's always fun.

Lydia Deetz ( Winona Ryder ) has turned her ability to see ghosts into a successful television show, but she also keeps seeing visions of Betelgeuse ( Michael Keaton ). Her gift has left her estranged from her skeptic daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega).

When Lydia's father, Charles, dies, she returns to Winter River with Astrid and stepmother Delia (Catherine O'Here) for the funeral and to settle the estate. Returning to the Winter River house also brings Lydia closer to Betelgeuse, who still haunts the model in the attic.

Beetlejuice was an introduction for many to director Tim Burton 's surreal imagination, even more singular than his prior Pee-wee's Big Adventure . A whole career later, Burton explodes even more boundaries of cinematic convention.

The film includes a stop-motion animated segment, dance numbers and a sequence made in the style of an old black-and-white foreign language horror movie, complete with subtitles.

Some of the indelible images from the original film return such as the shrunken heads, and the general jagged hallways of the afterlife.

The sequel takes the opportunity to include some new morbidly comical guests in the afterlife waiting room. It is a reasonable blend of what worked in the first movie and some clever new ideas.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has a lot more subplots to service than the original, but catching up with Lydia and Delia is most important. Delia's art and narcissism are magnificent and Lydia has clearly lived a life, understandably torn between a demanding gift and the strain it put on her relationship with Astrid.

It also makes sense for Lydia to have a child who does not believe in ghosts, partly because Lydia has never communed with Astrid's late father. Lydia also has a new fiance, the producer of her show, Rory ( Justin Theroux ) who adds his own plans to the memorial.

In the afterlife, Betelgeuse's ex-wife, a soul sucking spirit Delores (Monica Belluci), has returned. Afterlife police officer Jackson ( Willem Dafoe ) is on the case.

The script by the team of Alfred Gough & Miles Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith often treats these subplots as the perfunctory mechanics they are. They're happening so that Betelgeuse can make jokes and so the human characters can react to surreal ghosts.

The film keeps making up new rules for the afterlife, some of which are inconsistent but that was also always the point. The Handbook for the Recently Deceased given to new ghosts is way too long to read and the bureaucracy way too convoluted to follow.

The storylines do all converge in the finale, where many of them are resolved just as quickly as they were introduced. The film moves through the plot to get to the jokes.

The narrative does not always balance all of those parts equally, but while Delores is off screen for long stretches the audience never really wonders what's going on with her. There's always something entertaining on screen.

The script also has some business from the first movie it has to address. The ghosts of Adam and Barbara Maitland are quickly explained away since Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin do not return.

Since this is an afterlife comedy, killing off Charles doesn't completely get rid of him. The way Beetlejuice Beetlejuice addresses Charles in flashback and the afterlife without using original actor Jeffrey Jones is just one of the ways the sequel embraces its whimsical roots.

Jackson is a funny new character, a former action star now living out his fantasy in the afterlife. Delores is a captivating ghoul, undeniably seductive the way Bellucci carries herself, even when she's literally putting her body parts back together.

Even more fun are one-off characters relieved of the pressure to move plot along. One of Delia's artists, and an afterlife custodian ( Danny DeVito ) get to star in mini short films that pay off in their brief scenes.

In a media landscape where legacy sequels are more norm than anomaly, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice remembers what made the original special. It can't reinvent the afterlife again but it has plenty of fun on the surreal reunion tour.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.