It turns out that Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) hasn’t changed much in over 30 years: he’s less of a villain, but still a thorn in the side.

Parisa Taghizadeh/Warner Bros. Images

hide caption

switch caption

Parisa Taghizadeh/Warner Bros. Images

The mischievous demon known as Beetlejuice has been dead for centuries, but he’s had quite the long life in popular culture. Tim Burton’s hit film spawned a trippy animated series that I devoured as a kid in the late ’80s, and more recently, a Beetle juice stage musical that is now touring the US Still, I wasn’t looking forward to a sequel to the Burton film, which probably would have just been another nostalgic cash-grab to please fans.

Fortunately, there is no trace of cynicism Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Burton shows genuine affection for the characters from the first film and a genuine curiosity about how they’re doing, some thirty years later. Winona Ryder returns as Lydia Deetz, who escaped Beetlejuice as a teenager; now she’s a paranormal expert with her own talk show.

Lydia has long since buried the hatchet with her stepmother, Delia, the sublime Catherine O’Hara. But she’s having an even harder time with her own teenage daughter, Astrid, who is Jenna Ortega from the show Wednesdaywhose creators, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, wrote this film.

When Lydia’s father dies suddenly, the family reunites at their old Connecticut home for the funeral, where Lydia accidentally ends up summoning Beetlejuice, thanks in part to her sleazy fiancé, played by Justin Theroux. With a sudden whoosh, Beetlejuice is back — played by Michael Keaton, with the same shaggy green hair, rotting teeth, and mischievous streak as ever.

Lydia eventually joins forces with Beetlejuice, begging him to help her after Astrid falls into a trap and is sucked into the Underworld. But Beetlejuice has his own concerns. Centuries ago, when he was still alive, he married a woman named Delores, played by a witchy Monica Bellucci. Things didn’t end well, and now Delores is back, stalking him.

It’s a silly twist and a fairly minor part of the lighthearted, anything-goes plot. But that lightness is part of the film’s charm. Like its predecessor, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is essentially a supernatural, screwball rom-com in which marriage is never a matter of “till death do us part.” The film is refreshingly unsentimental about love, whether it’s Astrid being misled by a teenage crush or Lydia being courted by not one but two unsavory suitors.

Beetlejuice is less of a villain this time around, but played by a fast-talking, shape-shifting Keaton, he’s still a thorn in the flesh. He hasn’t really changed in 30 years; in the afterlife, that’s a drop in the ocean. But the living characters to have changed, in interesting ways. Delia, no longer just a sculptor but a multimedia artist, is more mellow than before, though O’Hara gives her a touch of punctiliousness, perhaps channeling her Moira Rose from Schitt’s CreekLydia, played with such moody confidence by Ryder in the first film, is now a nervous wreck, determined to save her daughter and their relationship at all costs.

At some point, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice becomes a kind of hellish door-slamming farce, with multiple characters hurtling through portals between the realms of the living and the dead. But while the film can be distractingly busy, it never feels frantic or tiresome.

The underworld’s production design is delightfully grim, and some of the visual gags – such as when a dismembered corpse reassembles itself with a stapler – are as exquisite as they are horrifying. And despite all the state-of-the-art engineering on display, the film retains a hand-crafted look that feels rooted in the original.

The result may not quite reach the darkly funny heights of the first film, but Burton seems more interested in updating than duplicating his earlier achievement, it must be said. There is one scene, however – a gorgeous choral rendition of Harry Belafonte’s calypso classic “Day-O” – that neatly harks back to the first film’s most memorable moment. It was enough to make me imagine the late, great Belafonte himself, hanging out with the various deformed denizens of this fantasy afterlife – and, to his surprise and mine, having a remarkably good time.