Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Directed by Tim Burton, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice follows Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz as she reluctantly returns to her childhood home after the death of her father – with complications ensuing after Michael Keaton’s title undead prankster makes an inevitable appearance. Filmmaker Burton, armed with a script by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, delivers a relentlessly erratic sequel that does, for the most part, remain unable to wholeheartedly capture the viewer’s interest and attention, and it’s clear, certainly, that the picture’s lamentable failure stems primarily from an overstuffed narrative rife with underwhelming, underdeveloped subplots – with this particularly true of the tiresome digression detailing a tentative relationship between Lydia’s daughter (Jenna Ortega’s Astrid) and a local boy (Arthur Conti’s Jeremy). And while the picture does boast a number of positive attributes, including eye-popping set design and Keaton’s predictably mesmerizing performance, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice‘s lack of forward momentum ensures that it fizzles out long before arriving at its admittedly winning finale (in which the cast sings along to “MacArthur Park”) – which is a shame, ultimately, given the potential afforded by the superior 1988 original film.

** out of ****