Beetlejuice

At the end, you feel exhilarated, because the cunning way Burton works is part of the joke. His innocent deviousness lifts you up high, like helium.

It's the apparitions that are the real stars: They're gross, gaudy and appropriately horrific.

While Beetlejuice will make absolutely no sense to those who demand coherence from a film, all viewers will delight in its dizzy, postliterate, postmodern style.

The star of the movie is gravel-voiced Keaton, who relies heavily on the special effects and make-up team headed by Robert Short.

The colorful, larger-than-life spirit world becomes quite acceptable because Burton and scriptwriter Michael McDowell establish the crazy personalities of their crazy characters so well.

The film is pure farce, tailored for the youth market and zapped up with suitably loony special effects.

In 1988, Michael Keaton needed only 17 minutes to create one of the best and weirdest characters in Hollywood history.


A wonderfully weird horror comedy from director Tim Burton, Beetlejuice invites the audience to have as much fun as its clearly having.

The film still works and is just as charming and engaging as it was when I watched it as a kid. Michael Keaton is iconic, and Ryder, Baldwin, Davis and O’Hara all excel in their roles (the less said about Jeffrey Jones the better). Full review in Spanish.

What more frightening than being dead? Being slogged down by bureaucracy and forced to read a handbook or facing the lecherous mayhem of a bio-exorcist? This is a fun and quirky look at death and the problems of the recently deceased.