Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has a big Lydia Deetz problem

There's a lot going on in Tim Burton's sequel to his 1988 hit Beetle juice. Burton and his writers bring back some of the original characters for Beetlejuice Beetlejuiceand introduce many new ones, then cram them all into half a dozen disconnected, incomplete storylines. None of the characters, new or old, are given room to breathe or assert themselves in a way that resonates like they did in the original film.

Monica Bellucci, as the film's ostensible villain, gets little more than an introduction and a farewell. In his return as the undead, lecherous chaos monkey Betelgeuse, Michael Keaton gets a few brief scenes but comes across almost as a supporting character in his own film. The sequel's most tragic victim, however, is poor, lost Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), the goth teen heroine of the first film, the sequel's ostensible protagonist, and the biggest missed opportunity in the whole chaotic affair.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is frustratingly short on ideas. There are a few promising storylines, like Lydia's mutually frustrating estrangement from her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) and Astrid's emotional connection with a local boy, Jeremy (Arthur Conti), who seems delightfully normal compared to Astrid's various strange blood relatives and their followers. (It's no surprise that he's up to no good: never trust anyone in a Tim Burton film whose entire brand is “I'm the normal one.”)

None of these half-baked storylines lead anywhere, however, amidst all the nods to the original film, which range from recycled designs and “let’s just do the exact same thing again” visual gags to complete takeovers of BeetlejuiceThat's the end of the new film. And that annoying lack of creativity, innovation, or repetition in the sequel is at its worst when it comes to Lydia.

In the 1988 film, Lydia is a classic Burton eccentric, an outsider who doesn't fit into the mainstream and doesn't necessarily want to. She's also an angsty teenager. But she changes a lot over the course of the film, finding confidence and zest for life and seemingly coming to terms with the world. So it's odd to see her revert to that angsty teenage version of her character in the new film. Thirty years later, she has a partner, a kid and a career, but she feels like the Lydia from the first act of the first film, cut out of that story and pasted into this one. Ryder plays her with the same rigid, tense desperation as in 1988, plus a bit more angst – but the real problem is the script, which gives her virtually nothing to work with.

When Beetlejuice Beetlejuice At first, Lydia is a popular television medium, starring in a ghost-hunting series and monetizing her not-always-welcome ability to see and speak to the dead. She is still traumatized by her teenage encounter with Betelgeuse and frequently experiences flashbacks and nightmares. Her teenage daughter Astrid hates her for reasons that read like someone mixed up a few different script drafts: Astrid doesn't believe ghosts are real, and seems to think her mother is making up supernatural encounters to get attention and money. But she is Also angry at Lydia for not finding and communicating with the spirit of Astrid's father, who disappeared in the Amazon and may not even be dead yet.

The clearest indication of how half-heartedly this film handles its human element is that there's barely any indication of who Lydia actually is as an adult, or why she does all the things she does. Her character is written erratically and inconsistently: over the course of just a few minutes early in the film, she treats ghosts as a frightening challenge, a boring everyday inconvenience, and a lifelong trauma. Astrid implies that Lydia neglected and abandoned her to pursue a television career, but it's never clear if that's true, how Lydia feels about the accusation, or if she even has any thoughts about her show and her fame as a ghost hunter.

There might be a way to reconcile all of these answers if Burton and screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville, Wednesday) gave audiences at least the slightest idea of ​​what Lydia thinks about her career. Is her show a farce, or does she actually care about the fate of the ghosts she faces or the haunted house owners she offers comfort to? Is she cynically exploiting the afterlife for profit, or is she being exploited by her manager Rory (Justin Theroux)? Is she trying to save people from the things she went through as a teenager? Is she a fighter, a savior, a victim, or simply someone capitalizing on a fad and commodifying her talent? We don't know, because Burton can't spare 30 seconds to have Lydia express anything that isn't an immediate reaction to some comedic frippery around her.

The first Beetlejuice Lydia is a bored, frustrated teenager who is as estranged from her mother Delia (Catherine O'Hara) as Astrid is from Lydia in the new film. Beetlejuice BeetlejuiceLydia and Delia seem to get along well, even able to support and listen to each other. A version of this story that was actually interested in developing either of these characters further might make good use of Delia's insights into dealing with a frustrated, rebellious teenager, or Lydia's memories of what it felt like to be that teenager.

Either would give the two women something to talk about with each other or with Astrid – and enough reasons to at least acknowledge the connection as they run around and have adventures in the underworld. If nothing else, it would at least be pathetic how Lydia's inability to connect with Astrid mirrors her own issues with Delia – if that was ever acknowledged, if either of these characters were treated like people rather than props in a series of over-the-top jokes.

And again, it is not so Beetlejuice Beetlejuice should have been a Tracy Letts stage play, with characters responding to crisis by vocally processing their generational trauma. But if you watch any truly memorable, emotionally effective comedy of the last 20 years, you'll probably find that the writers made the effort to turn the characters into people rather than caricatures, to give them opportunities to relate and connect with one another, or at least show some real emotion. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice squanders every opportunity to do so. And it should have started with someone deciding who the protagonist of this film actually is, whether she has ever made a meaningful decision in her life and whether the last 30 years have had any real impact on her at all.