Winona Ryder and Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. [Warner Bros]

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
Directed by Tim Burton
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆

IT is rather an obvious red flag, and one that is waved by director Tim Burton right from the off: Rory (Justin Theroux) is a crystal-bothering, shaman following, dirge-chanting science denier. How he has managed to persuade Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) to fall for him is pretty hard to fathom – but then again, there is very little that makes sense about this Beetlejuice tribute act.

Burton returns 36 years after he blessed cinemas with his simply brilliant Michael Keaton vehicle, about the horrible ghost living in the attic of a newly departed couple – and how they call on him to help get rid of a high-flying New York family who have moved into their home.

We learn that Lydia – the grumpy ghost-seeing goth in the original – has grown up to be a psychic with her own ghostly TV show. She is still angry – but you would be too if you had lumbered yourself with her TV-producing boyfriend who you just know from the off our man Beetlejuice is going to tie in knots.

This was a fine role for Keaton, and he slips back into it like putting on his favourite pyjamas. He bashes about all four sides of the screen with whirling energy that is a mixture of a hallucinating cowboy who has been at his horses medicine cabinet, a sleazeball middle manager from the 1970s and one of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. It is a heady combination and while this feels at times a showreel of Beetlejuice’s best expressions, that in itself is fun and cinematically worthy.

Beetlejuice is still hoping to trick Lydia into marrying him, while there is an underlying plot about her daughter Astrid (Jenni Ortega) having a teenage crush on a boy in her year (Arthur Conti), who may have something he doesn’t want the world to know about.

Burton references the original constantly, draws in other films and cultural references and jokes, and litters the place with slap-dash slapstick.

There is not much new, and apart from a nostalgia trip, it doesn’t have much point.

In the same manner Wes Andersen makes Wes Andersen films, the Belsize Park-based director has a style created in his cluttered imagination, a typhoon of ideas swirling a million miles an hour. Some – the original Beetlejuice, for example – stick. And for all its faults, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is an homage to one of the greatest films the 1980s saw released, and a reminder of the impact Burton has had.