Reviewed by Alicia Glass

The death of patriarch Deetz brings everyone back together, tossing in Beetlejuice himself to stir the plot, and some new faces to shovel in some ghostly shenanigans!

Oh thank goodness ya’ll. The first Beetlejuice film came out when I was but a wee thing and my mom, who saw it, forbade me to until I was a bit older. Which of course led me to see the film anyway, have gross and spooky but oddly compelling nightmares and in general, develop a love for all things Tim Burton. His unique style and color palette for each and every movie he lovingly crafts, is a masterpiece of skill, always a labor of love, and it shows. And some 30-odd years later after the first film, a Burton homage to all the horror and ghostly influences he had as a youngling that inspired a very-good cartoon show that lasted more than 4 seasons and almost 100 episodes and a fandom that spanned decades, Tim Burton brought that same style, that same unique love for filmmaking he gifted us way back in good lawd was that 1988 come on, to an excellent sequel.

So the Deetz’s have kind of scattered to the winds of various places, Delia with her “body art” pieces and Lydia with her unsurprising talking with ghosts show, while Lydia’s daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) is in total denial and embarrassed by the whole thing, her whole family is just … weird. And things get even more weird when suddenly everyone has to converge on the family house in Winter River to attend the funeral of Grandpa, Charles Deetz, who died at sea but totally not in the way you think.

It’s a pity there was no way in the neitherworld that they’d bring back Jeffrey Jones, who played Charles Deetz in the first film, to play the character in the sequel. Look it up if you want to know why, I guarantee the knowledge won’t make you happy; I liked how the sequel got around the whole issue, it was actually a very Burton-style solution.

So this armpit-stain of a human, Rory (Justin Therox), seems to be rather desperate. About everything! He just has to connect with Astrid somehow, he just has to remind everyone at the most inappropriate time dude seriously that he is there if anyone needs a shoulder to cry on, and oh yeah, he just has to ask Lydia to marry him … at her father’s wake. It’s enough to make a teenage girl run away, and that is exactly what Astrid does when our beloved Lydia just folds like a house of cards and says, wait for it, “Yes?”

First newcomer up to bat is Jeremy (Arthur Conti), simpering and sympathetic to Astrid, and did we mention cute? Astrid is staring at him with stars in her eyes and not noticing things she probably should be, so when Jeremy offers to spend the evening – not the night that’s the actual wedding ceremony yes we know gag – of Halloween doing whatever with her, of course she’s going to say yes. Astrid wants so badly to see her dead dad that she paid zero attention to what she was saying, out loud, from that one book. You know the one? Into the creepy green glow we go!

Elsewhere in the afterlife, Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) has settled into a ghostly life of … office work? Really? Surrounded by Bob the shrunken head guy and his clones basically, BJ waits for a request to come in and does, well, whatever anyway! Our ghost with the most is the exact same slovenly creepily somehow briefly charming definitely smarming demon he was before, still pining for Lydia, and ready to run for the ninth circle of hell when he finds out that his ex-wife Delores (Monica Belluci) has somehow escaped her unraveling confinement, pulled herself together, and is coming for her wayward husband!

That poor janitor (Danny Devito) sure didn’t deserve to die. Uh, again. And you have to wonder if the afterlife has actual cops and stuff to work crime scenes like this, ‘cuz this deflated sad sack this-shouldn’t-be-possible corpse is getting over-dramatized by the would-be cop at least he played one on TV, Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), or to be fair, his do-gooding ghost. He does have guys in uniforms with him that obey him, and assistant Olga (Liv Spencer) with word cards, gesture-coffee and helpful “You’re not a real cop,” reminders, so at least Wolf sure looks like a real cop. And needs must when a young handsome ghost plots to steal the life of your only daughter!

The afterlife is the same mish-mash fever dream of clashing psychedelics with black and white stripe styles and surprise neons, and there’s even not one but a few musical numbers. Why should the afterlife be grim anyway? Break out that fringe, shake that thang, get on the soul train! But once you do, Astrid will be gone forever. How to prevent this?? Do the one thing poor Lydia, who suffered nightmares and therapy and stuff over this very guy, swore she would never do – say his name, three times!

Anything more would give the entire movie all away and really, you want to catch all the zany ghostly afterlife shenanigans for yourself, so catch a sandworm to ride to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in theaters now!