Well the good news is that it isn't awful. It's at times pretty damn good. But boy does it have a couple of things that really bring it right down. The biggest and most blatant being Delores. She is introduced as the big villain of the piece. Throughout the whole film we keep coming back to her with shots of her striding down corridors, focused, on a mission. She is gonna fuck some shit up. I was finding it a little odd that none of the other characters were interacting with her through this, or even mentioning her existence, but that's ok as she's gonna pop out at the end and it's going to be fucking epic with an amazing battle....... oh wait she shows up and is instantly despatched and no one even seemed to care. She has to be up there with the most useless villains of all time ever. Even the coolest bit about her, her introduction where she is in parts and sews herself together, is Burton ripping himself off. It's beat for beat, moment for moment, near shot for shot of Sally sewing herself back together from A Nightmare Before Christmas. I honestly think that if you went into the edit and cut every single shot she is in, it wouldn't effect the story in anyway.

Another similar issue comes from the boyfriend subplot. He takes Astrid off into the afterlife to swap her life so he can come back, and this is all brushed over so fast. You never even get the chance to feel that she is in danger before Bettlejuice just pops up out of nowhere and hits a button sending him down a trapdoor, never to be mentioned again. Also, with all the various deaths of people that you get from seeing them in the waiting rooms etc, why would you make two be dead by shark attack. You have a whole world of deaths you can have fun of so I don't get having two exactly the same.

But that out of the way, it mostly has the feel of the world the first created. The effects, which was something I was worried about, take a big page from the stopmotion, handcrafted look and feel of the first. Keaton as Beetlejuice is on the same from and actually gets more screentime this film. There are some fun references, like Daniel Johnston, Mario Bava, a Sigur Ros song pops up and a whole section to me looks like it's an homage to Coffin Joe. It's all good fun and I feel most will be able to overlook the issues I had and like it even more.