BEETLEJUICE (1988)

Starring: Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Winona Ryder, Jeffrey Jones, Catherine O’Hara, Glen Shadix, Robert Goulet, Sylvia Sidney, Dick Cavett

Directed By: Tim Burton
Story By: Tim Burton
Written By: Larry Wilson, Michael McDowell & Warren Skaaren
Director Of Photography: Thomas Ackerman
Original Score: Danny Elfman
Production Design By: Bo Welch
Edited by: Jane Kurson

Dated a little but still brilliant. This film is truly a person’s imagination run amuck like his brain threw up on the screen and this is what came out. This is true creativity at work. can you honestly say that you could have come up with this film?

A couple build there dream house die then comeback as ghosts haunting the place. when a new family moves in and wants to not only redesign the house but demolish it. So when the two ghosts can’t do it on there own and the supernatural case worker they have been assigned isn’t really any help. They call a ecto-plasmic human exterminator named (You Guessed it) beetlejuice who is gross, crude and perverted. but then they form a bond with the family’s daughter. Who beetlejuice lusts after. It all ends with a confrontation at a exorcism/wedding with scary huge sandworms. Exactly I didn’t think you could.

Michael keaton is in perfect form he has never been as good as this again. A young alec baldwin and winona ryder are humorous. If you haven’t seen it yet. I am shocked. it’s been around awhile unless of course your parents are ultra religious and if they are why are you on here reading this.

From all the visual gags alone. You realize that mr. burton has a wildly inventive visual style and somewhat grace. It comes as no surprise he started as an animator. As this film is a live action cartoon filled with impressive special effects for the time period. This film is filled with dark comedy as it not only satirizes suburbia, nouveau riche and the art crowd. The affluence it portrays and appears to have the first three dimensional goth character in a film. This film is like a fairy tale or fable I love it.

It holds a special place in my heart. i used to watch it all the time as a kid. I loved it when it came on wpix channel 11. Which was like once a month. And everytime it came on I always watched it even though I already had it on video. It also launched me on one of my first crushes. Winona Ryder for a span of three years she was my dreamgirl. Now I just wait for her comeback. Hopefully tim burton makes another film as manic and magical as this

Everything about this film is magical it an play for kids as much as it does for adults plus it is darker then anyone who watches it realizes. As you watch it it is playful and fun but the more you watch you see the subtlety of subjects it challenges. All the office workers in the office seem to be suicides. it makes fun of suburbia as usual in tim burton films. There is the strange Dark character his alter ego. who in one scene keeps proofreading her suicide note to make it more dramatic.

This is the tim burton i miss who had artistic senesabilites but still had a toe in what it took to tell a mainstream story. this film is like a big screen carnival for him which is also reflected in the amazing score by Danny Elfman. this film could almost be a silent film for some scenes with the score taking over the dialogue for the scenes and they would still be as good.

Tim Burton is one of my favorite directors and his classic films like these seem more original and come from his imagination more then the studio films he has been making recently.

GRADE: A