Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

"Lydia" (Winona Ryder) has made a good living from her ghost-hunting style books and broadcasts much to the sceptical chagrin of her teenage daughter "Astrid" (Jenna Ortega) but they have to try to get on for the funeral of "Charlie" who was married to their mother/grandmother "Delia" (Catherine O'Hara). Meantime, in the underworld "Delores" (Monica Belluci) has quite literally stapled herself back together and is bent on reuniting with her eponymous husband (Michael Keaton) but he's les than enthusiastic at the prospect. Luckily, the young "Astrid" meets the handsome "Jeremy" (Arthur Conti) and before we know it, she has opened a portal to the nether world that soon has her mother racing around to rescue her from eternal damnation whilst the opportunistic stripey fellow tries to use that predicament to keep himself from his ruthless spouse who is leaving an increasingly gruesome trail of carnage for TV detective "Wolf" (Willem Dafoe) to sort out. There are plenty of enjoyable enough shenanigans going on as this quickly paced film knits these threads together, but somehow I found it all just a bit too flat. Like an "Addams Family" film that's over-written and doesn't feature anything like enough of Keaton or Dafoe and features way too much of Ortega's typically teenage character whom Hades probably wouldn't have wanted. It does rally well at the end with help from a big cake and the dulcet tones Richard Harris - great to hear that with cinema sound again, but aside from a characterful effort from O'Hara this didn't really want me saying his name once let alone thrice. It's fine but hasn't much spark.