
Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (B) takes the haunted house movie to a whole new level with Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin as a recently deceased couple trying to co-exist in the same bucolic household with an eccentric family including a goth girl played by Winona Ryder, plus the titular sleazy demon (Michael Keaton under outrageous prosthetics) being summoned in highly charged situations for madcap mayhem. Burton is best when crafting fantastical worlds of eccentric creatures and human oddities, and this is a candy shop for him, full of purgatories populated with characters in various modes of cartoon-style deaths and physical sight gags galore. The story and characters are largely adrift, leaving only Keaton as a real standout in his commanding and wisecracking 17 minutes on screen. The production is wide-eyed, colorful and full of iconic costumes and practical effects. The humor is just a little rude and the effects just a little crude, and it makes for a fun and adventurous modern comedy.