Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

I remember who introduced me to the original Beetlejuice movie: It was my late godfather, a native of the U.S. Virgin Islands, who got a particular kick out of the scene in which the Ghost with the Most turns a dinner party into a flesh puppet show set to Harry Belafonte's tune "Day-O." Everything about that movie worked where I was concerned. Well, it has a sequel now, complete with a scene in which Beetlejuice makes a roomful of people dance and sing to a golden oldie – this time, it's Richard Harris singing "MacArthur Park," the Donna Summer cover of which turns up in the closing credits – and while I don't dislike Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, I think the MacArthur Park gag goes on too long and stops being funny before it's over, and in some ways that's a thread that ties this whole movie together.

Time has passed. Think about it. Beetlejuice came out in 1988. That amount of time. 36 years! Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton and Catherine O'Hara still have it (more or less). Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux, Santiago Cabrera and Danny DeVito add their entertaining bits (more or less). Actually Dafoe is probably the most hilarious member of the cast, and Bellucci is underutilized. Decades after almost being forced to marry a ghost/demon named Beetlejuice, former Goth girl Lydia Deetz (Ryder) has made a fortune as a reality TV ghost whisperer, but she's still (cough) haunted by the experience that opened her sensorium to the paranormal. She has a teenage daughter (Jenna Ortega) who, not being a believer, exists in an ironic sort of rebellion against her twitchy, sensitive mum. But now Lydia's dad has died (a hilariously horrible death depicted in a way that creatively skirts around the absence of Jeffrey Jones), and the whole family has to return to "the Ghost House" where it all happened to, um, artistically mourn, and Lydia's shmuck producer/boyfriend chooses that moment to make a public proposal of marriage (so it can be all about him). Meanwhile, back in the afterlife, Beetlejuice still wants to tie the knot with Lydia, more than ever now that his (literally) soul-sucking wife is back. Throw in a ghoulish love interest for Astrid (the daughter), and a subplot about Astrid's dad dying but suspiciously failing to haunt the family, and a bunch of shrunken-headed zombies (notably "Bob"), and a B-movie actor who died doing his own stunts and spends his afterlife living out (if that's the correct verb) the tough cop fantasy of his signature role, and various methods by which characters come and go from the afterlife, and you have a rough roadmap of the overly complicated, sometimes farcelike adventure this movie houses.

I like the off-bubble teen romance angle. I dig Dafoe's rogue cop-wannabe antics. I enjoy seeing Theroux's shmuck-fiance character get his comeuppance. I kind of adore Bob. Poor Bob! And of course the bureaucratic nightmare of the afterlife is still kind of funny. But not as funny as the original 1988 film. In fact, that's pretty much thematic for why and how this movie falls short of its forerunner. The macabre surrealism of the "Neitherland" (?) and the so-idyllic-it-makes-your-flesh-crawl, "American Gothic" quality of the town of Winter River are still there, but the spare-no-one, cutting social satire of spoiled rich people is gone. Could that be because Tim Burton has grown so successful?

The purgatorial quality of the waiting room and the "take a number" line for the information desk in the afterlife are diminished. The incomprehensibility, to the point of uselessness, of The Handbook for the Recently Deceased has gone by the board, conveniently for plot purposes. The sandworms of the Saturnian moon of Titan are back in their original stop-motion-animation glory, but they contribute materially to the plot rather than just being a weird and threatening detail of the landscape for the dead. Delia Deetz's bizarre modern art is back (and how!) but its contrast to the Maitlands' salt-of-the-earth aesthetic is lost; which also, strangely, blurs the boundary between the real world and the afterlife. The Maitlands' model of Winter River is still up in the attic but the Maitlands are gone, meaning you have to sympathize with twisted people (like the Deetzes) because there's no one else.

All the things about the 1988 movie that made you think, "Ouch, that cut where it hurts," have given way to pure whimsy and fantasy. The only thing that has kept its purity is the subversive, lovably loathable character of Beetlejuice himself. I don't know what it'll take to make a third movie work (because, obviously, "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice") but I hope one thing they think about is re-establishing a point-of-view that joins the audience in its fear and trembling at the weird, wonderful, wicked and ultimately hilarious netherworld from which a Beetlejuice might arise.

Alert viewers might recognize Burn Gorman (the local minister), who played Owen on Torchwood. Astrid's love interest is played by Arthur Conti, a grandson of Tom Conti. Amy Nuttall, playing the real estate agent who is champing at the bit to sell the Ghost House, was on Downton Abbey for a minute. For the rest of the cast, you're on your own.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Astrid realizes Jeremy, the local boy she's been bonding with, is a ghost – a discovery you've been waiting for her to make because isn't it suspicious how his parents don't turn to look when he introduces her to them? (2) The shmuck producer-boyfriend takes a syringe of truth serum in the neck and, again, confirms what you've long since guessed, in a way that perfectly sets up his eloquent fate. (3) The newspaper Beetlejuice is reading in his office, which I'd like to have more time to read!