I went to high school between 2005 and 2009. This entailed needing to form a love of pop punk and emo music. Sadness meant sincerity, and a crowd of jobless teens yelling “I KNOW” to the lyrics “WORK SUCKS” was very in vogue. Hot Topic was THE hot topic. And outside of the necessary band tees to show off your knowledge of all things dark and brooding was a an entire section of “From the Mind of Tim Burton” paraphenalia. Has Tim become too much off a marketable brand? Maybe! But there’s real genuine great art if you look a litttle closer.

We grew up on ‘Nightmare Before Christmas‘ (not directed by Director Burton but he almost certainly had a steady hand in it) and ‘Edward Scissorhands’. So it made sense that it was a well we would continue to dip into as we grew older. It is a shame then that for a long nearly uninterrupted stint Tim Burton failed to deliver on the goods that he had built his career on. By my metrics after the release of ‘Big Fish‘ in 2003 Mr. Burton had a slurry of less than quality products from the commercially successful but down right abysmal ‘Alice in Wonderland‘ to the lazy ‘Dumbo‘ live action remake, a movie that definitely exists in the zeitgeist. There are exceptions to the rule of course, but the batting average was worrisome.

It brings me great pleasure then that after coming out with fun and quirky Netflix series ‘Wednesday‘, a reimaging of the Addams family daughter, Tim Burton has at the very least steadied his feet by reteaming with Michael Keaton. Making a sequel to his beloved second feature ‘Beetlejuice‘ with the aptly named ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice‘. And Burton manages to deliver on the things that made his career great, odd people feeling like they don’t belong, and practical effects that have their own visual energy.

While the sequel fails to fully live up to the madcap energy of the original it has the fun grossness we expect from Mr. Juice. It brings back Winona Ryder as Lydia now starring as a slighly sleezy late night medium on television in front of live audiences. The Lydia character is easily the most compelling, operating as a stand in for Burton himself. Having sold out and managing to make it in showbiz Lydia is concerned that she is wasting her talents, and in a relationship with someone who is clearly taking advantage of her. We are also greeted by Catherine O’Hara coming back to reprise her role as Lydia’s stepmother Delia. And of course we meet Lydia’s daughter, Atrid, portrayed by the up and coming Jenna Ortega. The film deals with the justifiable cancellation of Jeffrey Jones in a smart way, by animating his character’s demise and not putting the actor himself in the film.

And of course, the one and only Michael Keaton returns as the titular Beetlejuice. Determined to cause chaos and mayhem, to play by his own rules, and to generally be a thorn in the side of anyone he interacts with. The plot of the first ‘Beetlejuice‘ is thin. A couple of ghosts want their house to themselves so they hire Beetlejucie to help them oust the human invaders to hilarious results. The plot of ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice‘ is needlessly complicated.

It has probably three or four branches happening at any given moment, and it often feels like a few of them could be plucked cleanly out of the movie and nothing else would be effected. But we’re not here for plot are we? We’re here for undead goofs, and in that the film delivers. Lydia and her family return to their old house to mourn the loss of Charles Deetz. It does often feel like the movie has a list of homages to get through before credits are allowed to roll, some of them are welcome, and some of them are a little grating. But throughout we get buy-in from Keaton’s Beetlejuice, the red hot pulsing wire that keeps everything energized from the moment he shows up on screen.

I hope Burton is bolstered by his recent success, and I hope to see more from him that feels less like it needs to check boxes and more like it needs to make the boxes to be checked by others. But this is enough to get by on for now.

3.5/5