(Cinema) (Odeon - Guildford)

"Three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River after an unexpected family tragedy. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia's life soon gets turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter discovers a mysterious portal to the afterlife. When someone says Beetlejuice's name three times, the mischievous demon gleefully returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem."

After 36 years of development hell, false-starts and rumours, the Juice is once again loose. Unfortunately it's not "Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian", which was one of the brilliantly named previous scripts, but this ended up being a remarkably solid and fun time that almost had Timothy Burton back to his peak (I'll take this a billion times over 'Alice in Wonderland'). I honestly didn't realise the extent to just how popular this Beetlejuice fellow is, I went to see this on opening night, only to discover the screening was sold-out. Something which is so incredibly rare for my local cinema outside insanely big new releases. There were kids running round dressed in Beetlejuice T-shirts, costumes and more. I just had no idea how down with the modern kids this ghoulish horror-comedy series is.

I honestly never believed that a Beetlejuice sequel would be something that would see the light of day. I enjoyed the first film, although I'm not a die-hard fan or precious about it, which probably explains why I enjoyed this one just as much. In terms of belated "legacy-sequels" that panders to grown men who never grew up from childhood, this is easily one of the better ones. Burton clearly has a lot of love for this world, which is evident by his filmmaking here that actually feels like he's trying for the first time in a while, but it's still trying to be fun in favour of jangling-keys style references that have plagued films recently. A distinct lack of "Point and clap" at things you recognise moments, when there could have been heaps, or even attempts to start a "Burton-Verse" that may have involved a portal leading to Edward Scissorhands or Sweeney Todd. It's sad, but at this point, I'm genuinely expecting a film to merely exist as an excuse to expand, continue or combine some existing universes.

What I'm really here for is to find out whether Tim Burton has his mojo back after an undeniably rough period of his career. To my joy, this very much feels more in tone, spirit and filmmaking of his '80s work, where most of this looks hand-crafted, practical and bloody charming. From the very early stop-motion animation scene, I was so locked in, and it only got better from there. This is an absolute feast for the eyes and some of the most visually creative stuff I've seen all year. Still capturing that light-hearted but grizzly mix of afterlife designs where how these people died is reflected on their ghosts in graphic fashion, often with charmingly fake looking make-up, props on the body, or even puppetry work. Then Danny Elfman is also on fire here, throwing us an energetic and ghoulish score that slaps, while enhancing the tone and style.

One of my main draws to the first film was this take on the afterlife, and here, much like "The High Table" in 'John Wick', we further explore how this world works and expand upon it. With clever wordplay and puns (Love the "Soul Train"), this fully realised vision is a deliriously ride to jump through, as you take in all the bonkers, disgusting and beautifully put-together work that went into bringing this to life (*Death). I was a little worried this would be a bit toned down with its content, but I was pleasantly surprised how it goes into some fairly violent and sometimes bloody stuff, they even delve into an extended flashback in the style of the 1940s Universal Monsters pictures. I love to see it, and it brought me great joy. There's perhaps too many ideas thrown at the wall and it's all very unexplained, but I admire these films for having so many gonzo ideas and just asking the audience to just go with it.

While I absolutely adored everything when it came to the effects, vibe, world-building and tone, the story is unfortunately very safe, going exactly where you think it will. It's very much in the style of many recent films where we're just doing the original film again, but also throwing in younger members of the cast. I still had a ton of fun with it, but I really was hoping for something a bit more subversive and outthere, whereas this goes perhaps the safest route possible. Much like the ideas in the world-building, it does also suffer from undercooked plot threads that gets dangerously close to overstretching its runtime. Did we really need all the Monica Belluci stuff? She was clearly having a ball in the role and her opening scene is a riot, but you remove her from the film, and all it would do is bring things down to a tight 90-minutes. The stuff never connects emotionally (For obvious reasons), but I have to commend how they got around the Jeffrey Jones issue in such an hilarious and silly way that still has his character, but doesn't allow the paedophile actor to return to the screen. Oddly genius and provided some of the funniest moments of the film for me.

Performance wise, it's great to see these actors return to their roles, with some new additions to the cast. He may be less horny and sexually crass this time around, but even at his current age, Michael Keaton is having a ball reprising the role of this motor-mouthed maniac understandably still trying to tie-down Winona Ryder this many years later. Ryder herself takes the character in an interesting direction decades later, with the addition of a daughter, Astrid, played by Jenna Ortega who does what she does best, be weird, moody and gothic. I haven't watched 'Wednesday', but I can only imagine it's similar to Astrid here. Catherine O'Hara is wonderfully snarky with some great insults, snaps and bizarre behaviour, often being a scene-stealer. My favourite addition to all this was easily Willem "Big Dick" Dafoe, who leads the Underworld police force as an undead actor who never breaks character. Every time he was onscreen I was just smitten by his outrageously fun role.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn't reinvent the wheel or take many risks as a belated sequel to a beloved original, but as a ghoulish horror-comedy, it's great fun. Tim Burton is back on form with his gothic, silly and heavily practical filmmaking that is some of the most imaginative he's been in decades. A breezy 100-minutes that moves at a fast-pace, has a cast that brings their A-game, humour that often lands and an endless array or undead designs that are a joy to watch. Tim Burton might be back. The juice certainly is loose.

7/10 Dans