Beetlejuice sequel feels like a blend of a dozen scripts that never escaped Development Hell

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• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
• Directed by Tim Burton
• Written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar
• Starring Winona Ryder, Jenna Ortega and Michael Keaton
• Classification 14A; 105 minutes
• Opens in theatres Sept. 6

There is a good gag at the desiccated heart of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice sequel that hints at the filmmaker’s distaste for his own retread.

Here is a 36-years-later sequel to a genuine masterpiece – one of the most deliriously original, inspired and imitated (at least by its own director) romps of the 20th century – and it has been resurrected from its peaceful slumber six feet under for purposes not so much creative as commercial. So what does Burton do, in a seemingly self-conscious bit of apologia? He fills out some back story on his title ghoul, noting how before he became everyone’s favourite bio-exorcist/Fanta pitchman, Betelgeuse was a craven grave-robber. Direct what you know and all that.

At least once Burton gets that narrative backfill out of his system, the director recognizes that the less we know about and see Betelgeuse, the more powerful the character’s manic onscreen presence. And for a decent portion of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the peek-a-boo approach works, with the undead trickster stealing every scene. Michael Keaton’s go-for-broke performance is such a possessed work of splatter comedy that he almost proves right the producers who have been advocating for this nostalgia-play cash grab for decades. Cue the jaunty Danny Elfman theme, throw on your best black-and-white striped suit and cry aloud for he-who-shall-not-be-named three times over.

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But when pieced together – and Burton’s new movie is really a collection of chunks and slabs, each carved and hacked from what feels like a dozen scripts that never escaped Development Hell – the sequel connects in only the most Frankenweenie of ways. This is ultimately an ungainly, lumbering golem of a movie that, were it to be killed by fire, no one other than Burton might mourn.

The problems start at the very beginning, when Burton and his screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar open with an inciting incident that never, ever goes anywhere: the sudden and confusing re-resurrection of an ancient witch named Delores (Monica Bellucci, Burton’s current real-life paramour). It turns out that she is the long-ago ex-wife of Betelgeuse, and also imbued with soul-sucking powers that, um, kill the dead?

Don’t worry about paying attention to the particulars of who Delores is, where she fits into the mechanics of Burton’s universe, or anything other than the stellar make-up job afforded to her stitched-together corpse. It’s clear that Gough and Millar haven’t, given that the narrative thread dies cold halfway through the film.

Which leaves the filmmakers plenty (too much) time to attempt connecting a whole mess of other plot lines. The most compelling is the tension between three generations of women in the Deetz family, whose move into that gothic Winter River, Conn., home in the first film sparked so many supernatural shenanigans.

Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara) is still an avant-garde art star, although now she is mourning the sudden death of her husband Charles (Jeffrey Jones in the original, who has been replaced by a claymation version here, perhaps owing to the actor’s legal troubles). Delia’s stepdaughter Lydia (Winona Ryder), meanwhile, has mined her past to become the host of a cheesy Ghost Hunters-like reality-TV show (another echo of Burton’s self-aware streak). And Lydia’s own daughter, Astrid (Ryder look-alike Jenna Ortega), has spent her teen years trying to distance herself from anything to do with her mother and her macabre obsessions.

All three women are eventually pulled back into Betelgeuse’s orbit thanks to a collection of flabby subplots. There is Delores’s underworld rampage, but also the seedy machinations of Lydia’s TV producer/boyfriend (Justin Theroux, seemingly channelling Live with Regis and Kathie Lee’s on-set minder Michael Gelman), and the zeal of an undead cop (Willem Dafoe) whose place in the afterlife seems to retroactively rewrite the darkest joke of Burton’s original film (that anyone who dies by suicide becomes a civil servant in the afterlife). And then there is the budding romance between Astrid and local boy Jeremy (Arthur Conti), which, like the Delores material, eventually taxes the writers’ attention spans.

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Without the kind of real-world emotional anchor that was provided in the first film by the afterlife plights of the Maitlands (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, both completely absent), the whole ghost-busting affair this time wobbles around like an especially plastered Slimer, drunk on Ecto-Coolers.

It is all the more disappointing given that there are so many strong elements in the film struggling to get Burton’s attention. Ryder and O’Hara are fine enough, both such seasoned pros that they can, and do, this kind of shtick in their sleep. But Ortega, who shot to stardom last year on Burton’s Addams Family spinoff Wednesday on Netflix, is a delightful burst of dark-cloud energy as the cynical Astrid. She conjures both Ryder’s original performance and something more spry and elusive.

Theroux, too, is enjoyably slick, especially the few times the actor is allowed to bounce off the wonderfully disgusting Keaton, who hasn’t lost a wretched step in three decades-plus. And all the actors are accented by truly impressive creature design rendered in real-deal clay, latex and plastic, instead of superficial CGI.

Perhaps the film’s missteps will be forgiven once the inspired finale – soundtracked to an epic version of Jimmy Webb’s MacArthur Park – rolls around. The sequence might be a naked retread of the original movie’s immortal Day-O set piece, but it is orchestrated with such gruesome gusto that it seems Burton might’ve made this movie solely to execute the number. Every grave-robber gets his day, I suppose.