Beetlejuice sequel brings the nostalgia, not the fun

I loved the original Beetlejuice movie in the 80s. It was one of those movies I watched a million times and can practically quote it line for line. I was excited to see the sequel, all these years later. In the new movie, Lydia Deetz is all grown up. With her power to see ghosts, she has become a popular talk show host, where she visits haunted houses and helps people get through their supernatural problems. The only problem is her own daughter, Astrid, doesn’t believe her, and thinks it’s all a sham, and the two are estranged ever since the death of Astrid’s father.

Lydia gets a call one day from her stepmom Delia, with the sad news that her dad Charles has died (that’s an easy way to keep actor Jeffrey Jones out of the film). The family gathers back at the old house from the first movie to have a memorial. While all this is going on, the Juice himself is having his own problems in the afterlife. Everyone remember the scene in the first film when Beetlejuice is trying to marry Lydia and pulls a ring off a chopped finger, claiming, “She meant nothing to me.”? Well, that woman is back, and she has got revenge on the mind. As she hunts Beetlejuice in the netherworld, Beetlejuice is still trying to get hitched in the world above as a way to come back to life.

There’s some good laughs here and there amongst all the silliness (and it does indeed get very silly at times), but there’s not enough there, and there’s some serious problems in the plot. It plays up Beetlejuice’s ex as a major villain, until, all of a sudden, she’s not. There’s a nice subplot involving Astrid and a boy she meets, until suddenly, it resolves itself in a flash. After awhile, it seemed like director Tim Burton was just throwing ideas around and couldn’t pick one to stick with. Michael Keaton is fantastic as Beetlejuice, but the rest of the cast, and there’s some respected names in there, are middling-to-downright awful. I’m giving it 2 1/2 stars, but the reality is some of that is based on my own personal nostalgia. It’s really not that great of a movie. ★★½