Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ★★★☆☆

After seeing the original film a couple months ago, I was pretty excited for this one. The original was really strange to me when I first watched it since I loved all the practical effects and was amazed with what they could do for an 80s film. Fast forward to the sequel 30+ years later and I had some low expectations for this sequel, but it definitely delivered. The story follows the Deetz family thirty years later as an unexpected tragedy ocurrs in their family. During this same time, Lydia Deetz's rebellious daughter is tricked into opening a portal into the afterlife, and Lydia is forced to call upon Beetlejuice's help in order to get her back. Of course, Beetlejuice has his own problems and will use his ways to ensure he still gets to marry Lydia all these years later. I will say, most sequels that come out this late after the original don't do this well, so I was thoroughly surprised when I saw how good this film was. The story itself was fast paced executed well, something that doesn't always happen with sequels, and the new characters were explained pretty well. I liked that all the reoccuring characters were played by their original actors (looking at you Addams Family Reunion) and Michael Keaton definitely gave a performance on par with his original one from the 80s. The visuals itself were great and it was cool to see them still being done practically since Tim Burton is known for that, and it was also impressive that this film still captured the same feeling as the first with all the wackiness and strange scenes that made the first one so memorable. The comedy was also comparable to the first one with similar 'pop-out' and 'gag' visuals being shown throughout, and most of the times the jokes landed. A complaint I do have however is the dialogue during certain parts of the movie. Most of the times the dialogue was fine, but in the beginning as they tried to establish most of the characters I found there to be a lot of corny and cliche dialogue. Things got much better once the plot progressed 20 minutes into the movie, but the beginning was noticeably cliche. Also, and I don't let this affect my scores most of the times, but there was a lot of fan service (makes sense due to the demographic) which made the movie extremely entertaining but some may not like it if they were looking for something completely new. Overall, this was a great sequel with cool visuals and great comedy.