Beetlejuice: Juice is loose as sequel is box office hit

The Guardian wrote, external that the sequel was “a pivotal picture for the director”.

“It was a calling card; the moment at which he was fully able to indulge his macabre, goth-boy, grand guignol vision.”

In the three-star-review, Wendy Ide added that the movie “was never going to match the instant cult appeal of the original, but it has a lot of fun trying”.

Similarly, The Independent awarded the film two-stars, external and said that there are some “wonderful gags and enjoyably grotesque clowning from Keaton” but Burton’s “ability to tell a coherent story is very much in doubt”.

Geoffrey Macnab praised Keaton’s role reprisal and also noted a humorous cameo from Danny DeVito and a strong performance from Monica Belluci as we see her staple her mutilated body back together to a remix of Tragedy.

But he added that Ortega was “relatively conventional and restrained as the stock moody daughter”.

“Next to the vomiting, gurning, maniacally grinning Keaton, she can’t help but seem a little bland and strait-laced.”

However, NME wrote in a four-star review, external of the film that Ortega “reanimates” the undead classic and applauds her performance as a the “sharp, disenchanted daughter”.

While the sequel was a hit at the US box office, it didn’t fare as well abroad as it made $35m in 69 foreign markets.