By Bob Grimm

Seeing Michael Keaton back as “the ghost with the most” does provide an initial rush, but Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a sequel that tries to do too much, and it unravels with an unpleasantly frantic and sloppy pace.

Keaton hilariously grumbles and mumbles during his few minutes on the screen. He has the same energy he had 36 (!) years ago in the role—yet he’s a bit player here despite playing the title character. Why?

There’s a fun flashback showing the origins of Beetlejuice and his problems with his psychotic ex-wife (Monica Bellucci) that is fun and intriguing. But that ex-wife, supposedly coming to suck out Beetlejuice’s soul, is reduced to a silent, shallow side character who just runs around doing unpleasant things. This film could have been a lot more fun had it expanded upon that origin story, with Keaton playing Beetlejuice before his death, allowing us to see just how bad his marriage was in more than a brief flashback. More Keaton would equal more fun.

Seeing Michael Keaton back as “the ghost with the most” does provide an initial rush, but Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a sequel that tries to do too much, and it unravels with an unpleasantly frantic and sloppy pace.

Keaton hilariously grumbles and mumbles during his few minutes on the screen. He has the same energy he had 36 (!) years ago in the role—yet he’s a bit player here despite playing the title character. Why?

There’s a fun flashback showing the origins of Beetlejuice and his problems with his psychotic ex-wife (Monica Bellucci) that is fun and intriguing. But that ex-wife, supposedly coming to suck out Beetlejuice’s soul, is reduced to a silent, shallow side character who just runs around doing unpleasant things. This film could have been a lot more fun had it expanded upon that origin story, with Keaton playing Beetlejuice before his death, allowing us to see just how bad his marriage was in more than a brief flashback. More Keaton would equal more fun.

Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara return as Lydia Deetz and her stepmom, Delia. They each have their moments, along with Keaton, as they attempt to give this mess a sense of purpose.

Jenna Ortega is surprisingly dull as Lydia’s daughter, Astrid. Old-timey director Tim Burton, a lost cause for many years now—he hasn’t made a really good film since Sweeney Todd 17 years ago—has misplaced his ability to both charm and creep out audiences at the same time.

Lydia has become the host of a reality show about ghosts being real—perhaps the most unexciting and unsurprising development writers could give her character, who was so original and wonderful in 1988. She even sports the same hairstyle with the funky bangs. Give me a break! Lydia was not a cartoon character in the original, but she is in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Ryder tries her best, but the character feels hollowed out.

O’Hara gets a couple of laughs as a more road-weary version of Delia; she’s just sort of blasé about her husband’s horrific death in a combination plane crash/shark attack, but she’s much sweeter regarding Lydia. Disgraced actor Jeffrey Jones, who played that husband in Beetlejuice, doesn’t appear in the flesh in the film, but there is a short and amusing animated sequence where his character’s likeness appears.

The ever-reliable Justin Theroux tries to breathe some life into the proceedings with his usual high-quality strain of comedic prowess as Lydia’s boyfriend and producer. He definitely has his moments and is the best thing about the movie beyond Keaton, but I get a feeling a lot of his good riffs wound up on the editing room floor. He’s a great screamer.

Ortega gets caught up in a subplot with a boyfriend (Arthur Conti) who might not be what he seems, which is just another distraction cluttering the movie. The weird boyfriend plot, along with the Beetlejuice-origin plot thread, would’ve benefited from more time and development. One of them should’ve been dropped to create a little breathing room. This movie is edited in such a way that makes you just want it to stop and be over.

All my grumbling aside, there is a wedding scene in this movie involving the Richard Harris version of “MacArthur Park” that is so outrageous, and so funny, that it reminds of Burton’s prior brilliance—and shows what this movie really could’ve been. It’s one of the few things that kept me from giving the movie my lowest rating.

We all had high hopes for this one, and honestly, I’m sure many viewers will have some degree of fun with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Despite its massive flaws, it’s still fun to see the likes of Keaton, O’Hara and Theroux delivering on the promise.

But alas, Burton tries to pack three sequels into one here, creating something more deserving of a miniseries than a 104-minute movie (a common problem these cinematic days). This deserved a solid 800 minutes—but instead, there is so much crap on the screen that you’ll stop caring a quarter of the way into the movie.