‘Beetlejuice’ lite: Keaton kills it in Burton’s watered-down sequel to his visionary, cartoony original

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” — 2.5 stars

If “Beetlejuice” was made from fresh-squeezed originality, then “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” would be a watery sequel reconstituted from creativity concentrate.

Tim Burton’s brilliantly staged, visionary 1988 live-action cartoon-on-acid concocted a cauldron of comedy, camp, creepiness, horror, ghosts, sandworms and music, capped by Michael Keaton’s manic showstopper performance as a demonic “bio-exorcist” who could be summoned by simply saying his name three times.

Keaton returns here in top comic form, 36 years older, energized and ready to rock the underworld.

But where “Beetlejuice” sucked us into Burton’s eerie, singularly disturbing and blackly comic vision (which had been stifled when he worked for Walt Disney animation), “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” feels more like a fan project created by committee.

Can’t decide on an ending? Put in three.

Can’t decide on a main plot? Offer several.

Go for commercially safe nostalgia over risky innovation, although this sequel does venture into predatory males seeking to take advantage of trusting females.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” invests an inordinate amount of time setting up the characters and situations. Keaton doesn’t bring the demonic fire and bombast until almost an hour into the story, which prompted me to imagine how much stronger his entrance would have been had it been delayed to when he counsels a couple — Lydia (Winona Ryder) and Rory (Justin Theroux) to “spill your guts,” then demonstrates how to do it.

A promising opening stars the alluring Monica Bellucci as Delores, a soul-sucking entity who magically reassembles her chopped-up body parts stored in various pieces of luggage and boxes. Once she has stapled her arms, legs, face and torso together, she lets it be known that she has returned to settle an old score with Beetlejuice.

This intriguing subplot disappears for a long, long time, replaced by conflicts of a more domestic nature.

Lydia Deetz, Ryder’s goth teenager in the original movie, has become a neurotic host of a paranormal reality TV show called “Ghost House.” Lydia’s self-serving TV-producer boyfriend Rory, who speaks in snotty platitudes dripping with insincerity, totally supports her paranormal preoccupation.

But not her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega — emanating a Wednesday Addams vibe).

“Ghosts are not real!” she shrieks. A sassy outcast at school, Astrid discovers her potential soul mate when she crashes her bike into a tree house containing a cute, teenage Fyodor Dostoevsky fan named Jeremy (Arthur Conti).

Meanwhile, the subplots pile up, with Astrid sorely missing her deceased father Richard (Santiago Cabrera), and Lydia’s pretentiously artistic mother Delia (a delightfully dotty Catherine O’Hara, reprising her original role) missing her own shark-eaten husband Charles (Jeffrey Jones, rendered in animated segments).

I am not sure why screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar felt compelled to add Wolf Jackson, the dead, hammy star of a TV cop show. Jackson, played with committed overkill by Willem Dafoe, sucks up a lot of screen time. He leads a climactic police assault on a church in a wild and crazy sequence recalling the strained pandemonium of the finale from the abortive 1967 James Bond comedy “Casino Royale.”

All this while the characters stage a cheesy lip-sync marathon to Richard Harris’ rendition of “MacArthur Park,” a sloggy attempt to replicate the inspired “Banana Boat” group-singalong in the vastly superior 1988 original.

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Starring: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci

Directed by: Tim Burton

Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated PG-13 for drug use, language, suggestive material, violence. 104 minutes