Review: Michael Keaton stars in his funniest role ever as Beetlejuice makes his freak flag fly

The fall film season kicks off in high gear with "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," now in theaters after opening the fancy schmaltzy Venice Film Festival. The sequel feels possessed by the 1988 Tim Burton original, which is just how it should feel. Not everything worked 36 years ago. And there are rough patches this time as well. But what does work, works like gangbusters.

What a treat to welcome back Michael Keaton in his funniest role ever as Betelgeuse (pronounced Beetlejuice) the motor-mouthed, rotting corpse and trickster demon who makes a hilarious art of being totally disgusting. The first film won an Oscar for makeup but nothing for Keaton, which shows the Academy's disrespect for comic acting. Keaton's Beetlejuice is an all-timer.

Also returning is Winona Ryder in top form as Lydia Deetz, the former goth teenager who's now hosting a reality show about haunted houses and how to unhaunt them. Lydia has her own daughter, Astrid, played wonderfully by Jenna Ortega, the star of Burton's TV hit, "Wednesday." Astrid thinks her mom is bonkers, but not for a second do we doubt their love.

The great Catherine O'Hara is also back as Delia, Lydia's wicked stepmother. But the crux of the plot, cooked up by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, is how Lydia is going to deal with Beetlejuice, who is still angry that the teen Lydia left him at the altar three decades ago. It seems our favorite fiend needs to marry a human to really torture other humans back on Earth.

Got that? No matter. The fun is all in the interactions that begin when the Deetz family converge on their own haunted house in Winter River, Connecticut, to mourn a death in the family. No spoilers, except to say that this sequel has more emotion than the original ever contemplated.

It also has laughs. Big ones with surprise visual jokes that dazzle and delight. The plot kicks in when Beetlejuice is summoned from the afterlife by someone repeating his name three times.

Suddenly, there he is, the bio-exorcist from the hallways of hell, dealing with his vengeful ex-wife Delores (a knockout Monica Bellucci) as she reassembles her separated body parts with a staple gun while the Bee Gees warble "Tragedy." Burton is back, babe!

Just wait till you see their romance recapped as a badly dubbed black-and-white Italian film. The visual jokes are nonstop. And there's original composter Danny Elfman supplying a score you can bounce to. And be on the lookout for a ghost detective who was once a B-movie hambone actor. It's a role that permits Willem Dafoe to run wild. All the technical credits come up aces, especially the camera wizardry of Haris Zambarloukos, the fabulously eccentric costumes by Colleen Atwood and the drop-in songs that reach maximum hilarity with the cast lip-syncing to Richard Harris's mangling of "MacArthur Park."

Kudos as well to the practical effects that outnumber all the usual digital pyrotechnics. Burton makes everything seem handmade and that's irresistible.

Among my complaints (you knew this was coming) I'd have to include overstuffing the movie with subplots. Lydia has a sleazy, pony-tailed boyfriend, played by Justin Theroux, and Astrid hooks up with a fellow Dostoyevsky fan (Arthur Conti). The most unforgivable sin is reducing Keaton to only 17 minutes on screen, but damn he makes every minute count.

In the end, though, it all comes down to Beetlejuice letting his freak flag fly. That he does. As the man says, "the Juice is loose." Act accordingly.