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A mildly entertaining sequel that suffers from feeling like there’s three different sequels happening at once. I enjoyed the original “Beetlejuice” when it came out, but I’ve mostly forgotten about it over time and never had a desire to see any type of follow-up. And it feels like the writers had plenty of ideas for a sequel, but they couldn’t decide on one, so they used them all. Because of that, the story is all over the place. There’s the continuation of Betelgeuse and Lydia, a story about Lydia’s daughter Astrid. and threat of a deadly new enemy, Delores. (Not to mention smaller stories of various undead characters in the afterlife.) The film makes no real attempt to explain the events of the first film, which will leave new viewers in the dark about who any of these characters are or what went down nearly thirty years ago. Despite this, the Lydia storyline is still the strongest of the bunch. Astrid’s story fell a bit flat, with the whole thing developing way too quickly. (And Jenna Ortega’s casting and some of her story beats have some major similarities to the first season of “Wednesday.”) The weakest link here is the Delores stuff. There’s a strong start to it, with some great visuals, but then it ultimately goes nowhere. When it’s all said and done, the ending seems fine at first but is unnecessarily ambiguous.
** out of *****