Beetlejuice Beetlejuice review: Tim Burton’s revival is a merry romp with the undead

Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Monica Bellucci are back in Tim Burton’s goth sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, that shines with his striking visual style and dry wit.

Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (M)

105 minutes

In cinemas

★★★½

Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a lot of fun from beginning to end, buoyed by likeable comic performances by the likes of Willem Dafoe, Justin Theroux and Catherine O’Hara of Schitt’s Creek fame.

As sequels go, this one was a long time coming. The original dazzled audiences in 1988 and made a killing at the box office. It’s also a sequel that keeps the same director and two of the main stars.

Michael Keaton returns as the freelance demon Betelgeuse, who has been dead since the Black Plague.

Winona Ryder is back as Lydia Deetz, who is no longer the Gothic teen from 1988 but the host of a successful television show called A Ghost House.

The everything incorrrect Betelguese wanted to marry Lydia in the original, as it would allow him to leave the Afterlife he’s stuck in, and nothing has changed in the three decades-plus since.

Her boyfriend, Rory (Theroux), is a producer on the TV show, in which people talk about their haunted houses and paranormal visitors. He’s a new age man, or so he claims, and almost everything he says is cringingly funny.

Her stepmother, Delia (O’Hara), is an artist and snob. When she reveals her husband has left her, Lydia assumes a divorce looms. “What a horrible thought!’’ Delia exclaims. “No. He’s dead.”

So is Lydia’s husband.

Their young adult daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), thinks ghosts are “for the gullible” and her mother has built a career on “supernatural bullshit”.

Betelgeuse’s wife from the plague days, Delores (Monica Bellucci), is back and out for ­revenge.

She’s a soul sucker, which means she can make dead people “dead dead”, as Danny DeVito learns in a cameo role.

And there’s an Afterlife detective, Wolf Jackson (Dafoe), who was a B-grade action film actor before he died. It’s a terrific ensemble cast and the spirited script by Alfred Gough and Sydney-born Miles Millar allows them lots of room to bounce off each other.

“I want you two kids to know this is a safe space,’’ the manic Betelgeuse tells Lydia and Rory when the three of them first meet.

They meet because, in short, Betelgeuse makes it to the living realm and continues his pursuit of Lydia, with his mad, bad and dangerous-to-know ex-wife on both their tails.

What unfolds, in the same place as before, Connecticut, hits all the right notes for fans of the original, including the Afterlife sand worms, consultations with The Handbook for the Recently Deceased and the possessed urge to group-sing a song, in this case Jimmy Webb’s MacArthur Park aka Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain.

Newcomers can go along for the ride and enjoy Burton’s striking visual style and dry wit.

The Afterlife, for example, is a “take a number and a seat” bureaucratic limbo.

When Delia visits she asks to be taken to the VIP lounge.

Keaton has his moments but is underused. The supporting cast more than make up for it. The title refers to the fact that repeating Betelgeuse’s name three times summons him to the human world.

This opens the question as to whether there will be a third instalment.

Let’s go to the director on that. “Let’s do the math,’’ Burton said in a recent interview.

“It took 35 years to do this, so I’ll be over 100. I guess it’s possible with the advent of science, but I don’t think so.”