Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the latest in what the internet has dubbed “legacy sequels” – new entries in franchises that have been dead for decades. The legacy sequel moniker comes with baggage due to terrible films that almost ruin the stature of their franchise (see examples like Rambo from 2008 or Independence Day: Resurgence) but every now and again there’s a winner like Top Gun: Maverick.

Of all these legacy sequels Beetlejuice seems to have more hesitation than most. The original from 1988 is such a unique piece of filmmaking that did so much in its runtime that a sequel, more than 30 years later, simply feels unnecessary. A common complaint of legacy sequels is that they offer little to the audience and fall into the realm of “cash grab”, adding to the hesitation around this whole affair.

With so much working against this movie, how did things shake out? We won’t drag it out much longer, and you did read the headline: this one is pretty good and managed to impress despite our misgivings about the entire concept.

“Beetlejuice is back! After an unexpected family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid, discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. With trouble brewing in both realms, it’s only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times and the mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem,” reads the official synopsis.

Returning from the original is Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara and Tim Burton behind the camera. There’s a few more new additions such as Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe but the main new star is Jenna Ortega as Astrid Deetz, daughter to Ryder’s Lydia Deetz from the first movie.

We have to tackle that premise first because, unfortunately, it’s the worse part of the movie by far. The plot and where it goes in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is one of the most unnecessary we’ve seen in any movie, let alone a legacy sequel.

As legacy sequels need to fight tooth and nail to justify their existence and beat back the cash grab allegations, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is content to just wander around and offer almost nothing new. We highly doubt the cast and crew were tempted back to this franchise because of a killer script and, when the credits roll, we can’t help but think that it was all a bit wasteful.

This lack of a compelling script is strange as the writing itself is actually quite solid. There’s a decent array of jokes (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is written much more like a comedy compared to the original) and the dialogue is usually believable and fun to listen to.

The cast seems to be having a ball, especially Keaton. It’s hard to believe that he’s in his seventies under all that makeup. He definitely didn’t disappoint in reviving this jokester demon and our only real compliant around his is that he isn’t in the movie enough. The twoish hours that the film runs for goes by quite quickly and we found ourselves wanting for more Keaton.

Similarly actors like O’Hara, Dafoe, Bellucci and Theroux all know exactly what kind of movie they’re in and ham it up in the best way possible.

The two oddities are Ryder and Ortega. Ryder’s performance is… off, and we can put our finger on why. She seems, maybe lost? Her performance is quite understated even when the plot is going off the rails. This didn’t look, sound or feel like the character from the first movie and part of that may be due to the simple passage of time, but either the script or Ryder just failed to make that final leap to connect these two versions of Lydia Deetz together.

Ortega is similarly playing it way too cool. As the audience surrogate this time around, she never strips off the “I’m too cool for this” demeanour even when the plot becomes increasingly whacky and sinister. This worked for a character like Wednesday who was too cool for everything, but when you have a regular girl thrust into the insane world of Beetlejuice , you’d hope that the fun and strangeness of things would rub off on her, and on the audience as a result.

The great dichotomy in the writing of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that individual scenes and character dialogue are really fun and well put together, but the final product with the cast performances leaves a decent amount to be desired. It’s one of those movies where you will be more fond of individual scenes and plot points, instead of the package as a whole.

Where Beetlejuice Beetlejuice arguably shines the brightest is in its presentation, especially its attention to detail. Our favourite example is this: at one point characters need to climb up a ladder to exit the Land of the Dead. Instead of just being a simple ladder, it’s all curved, uneven and warped to match the weirdness of that world.

This may seem like a tiny, unwarranted detail, especially for a Burton movie, but it shows that love and care were poured into everything, even something as mundane and utilitarian as a ladder.

Those who enjoyed the practical wardrobe and puppetry of the first movie – especially the horrors these were used to create – are in for a real treat here. While it’s obvious that CGI was used in abundance, it was done in a way to mimic the look of the original. The dead in the Land of the Dead, walking around with all their weird injuries that killed them, all seem tangible. The fully-CGI work that would have been puppetry is made to look like puppetry, complete with the distinctive way that form of filmmaking is a bit imperfect.

We’re sure a lot of actual costuming work and puppetry happened here, but the way it was blended with CGI is almost perfect. This could have easily been a CGI slopfest but it isn’t, and seeing the next goofy horror in the next scene was a massive part of this film’s appeal.

The score, on the other hand, is much more understated and broken up by some full-on musical pieces. The original movie is, of course, famous for its Banana Boat (Day-O) song scene and while the sequel tries to capture this lightning again, it doesn’t really succeed.

If we’re being unkind “really doesn’t succeed” could be the tagline of the movie, but we had way too much fun and saw far too much care and attention poured into it to be that cruel. Instead, we’d rather say “got really close” is much more fitting. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice does contain a lot of the same charm and weirdo energy that made the original a classic, but it just falls short of repeating this successfully.

Almost all of that falls at the feet of the story which failed to be properly engaging or give the audience a real reason to root for it, but if you can enjoy things scene to scene and push some of that out of your mind, you can have a fun return to Winter River and its cartoon underworld.

FINAL SCORE: 7 OUT OF 10.