Tim Burton’s sequel “surpasses the original in almost every way”

36 years after its release, this sequel to the director’s classic supernatural comedy is a wonderfully wacky farce full of mind-blowing punchlines and great special effects.

Betelgeuse has risen from the dead. Or rather, Betelgeuse may still be dead, but he’s back nonetheless. It’s been an incredible 36 years since Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice introduced the character, a demonic slime-monger played by Michael Keaton, but Hollywood is Hollywood and no intellectual property can rest in peace forever. So now Burton has made a sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the opening film of this year’s Venice Film Festival.

I can’t say I had high expectations; after all, the last time a 1980s supernatural comedy was granted a sequel after decades of waiting, the result was disappointing. Ghostbusters: Life After Death. Therefore, it is a relief to report that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is more of a freakier, bloodier and overall slimier equivalent to Top Shooter: Maverick. That is, it’s a sequel that comes 36 years later, is an intelligent and loving homage to its predecessor, but surpasses it in almost every way. Of course, it’s convenient that Keaton was covered in corpse makeup in the first film, so his Betelgeuse can look exactly the same today as it did in 1988.

The nicest surprise is that Beetlejuice is something very special: a big-budget comedy that’s actually funny. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar’s script is full of jaw-dropping punchlines, and Burton’s visual gags are still hilarious despite pushing the boundaries of how eccentric and macabre a Hollywood blockbuster can be. One important point is that he doesn’t rely on CGI, but uses practical effects like puppets, prosthetics, and buckets of slime, which make the jokes both funnier and more disgusting.

The film’s only fault is that it has a few too many plot threads, giving it a drawn-out middle section and a rushed and muddled finale: Like the original Beetlejuice, more time could have been spent with Betelgeuse. Keaton’s snorting troublemaker now has a desk job in the Underworld, a nightmarish bureaucracy populated by lost souls and subject to a variety of imaginatively gruesome mutilations. But he still mourns Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), the disgruntled goth teenager he tried to marry in the first film. Lydia is now a “psychic mediator” presenting a television show produced by her wonderfully self-absorbed boyfriend (Justin Theroux). She also has a disgruntled teenager of her own, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who is embarrassed by what she believes are her mother’s fraudulent claims of seeing dead people. And Lydia still can’t get along with her own stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara), a screamingly narcissistic artist who makes O’Hara’s character in Schitt’s Creek seem shy and reserved.

As with Top Gun: Maverick, the long gap between the old and new films works to its advantage. Rather than feeling like a reboot, Beetlejuice is a comedy with its own story and its own problems. The difficulties of growing older, being a parent, and dealing with grief can be very moving. But then the film always returns to macabre and cartoonish silliness.

The idea is that the various Deetzes come together when Lydia’s father is killed: The actor who played him, Jeffrey Jones, is now a registered sex offender, which most likely explains why he wasn’t invited back. When the family gathers at the haunted house where Betelgeuse broke through from the other side all those years ago, there’s no sign of the ghosts played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in the original film (“How convenient,” says Astrid as Lydia justifies why they’re no longer there). But Beetlejuice is still starting to groan under the weight of all its characters. Astrid gets a lover (Arthur Conti); Betelgeuse is pursued by his vengeful, Morticia Addams-like ex-wife (Monica Bellucci); and Willem Dafoe plays a vain former actor who works as a detective in the afterlife because that’s what he used to play in the movies. No wonder the writers can’t keep track of everything that’s happening.

As ponderous as Beetlejuice is, this delightfully wacky farce is still one of Burton’s most entertaining films, and a welcome return to his own brand of offbeat creepiness after the Disney flop that was his 2019 live-action remake of Dumbo. He reunites with some old friends in front of and behind the camera, and adds in some musical numbers, animated segments, and Italian film pastiches, so you can tell he had a lot of fun making it. Audiences will have a lot of fun, too.