Critic Reviews

The zippy pacing, buoyant energy and steady stream of laugh-out-loud moments hint at the joy Burton appears to have found in revisiting this world, and for anyone who loved the first movie, it’s contagious. That applies also to the actors, all of whom warm to the dizzying lunacy.

Perhaps most miraculously, it represents Tim Burton getting his groove back, successfully returning to the dark comedy and outrageous visuals that marked his extraordinary early work.

Directed by Burton and written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the fantastical comedy is a hilariously strange and charismatic voyage through Hollywood’s best creative minds and most skilled special effects magicians.

Tim Burton’s belated sequel to 1988’s weird, wild, and hilariously macabre Beetlejuice abounds in morbid, nauseating delights.

Burton has thrown everything at the wall and then carefully sculpted what has slithered down into a rollicking yet disciplined supernatural caper with a heart.

Burton has just allowed himself to be silly and have fun; Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is filled with low-stakes wisecracks and kindergarten-style one-liners, but the effect works. The movie carries you along on its wriggling magic carpet of mayhem—and features one sequence of creepy-elegant-funny cracked poetry that’s classic, old-school Burton.

The nicest surprise is that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that rare thing, a big-budget comedy which is actually funny. The screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar is packed with knock-out punchlines, and Burton's visual gags manage to be hilarious even while pushing the boundaries of how eccentric and macabre a Hollywood blockbuster can be.

It’s silly, giddy and a little bit disgusting – just what we want from Beetlejuice.

It’s unmistakably a return to joy for a legendary director, and that goes a long way in making this film stand out in a sea of ill-conceived sequels.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is strangely paced and barely comprehensible, plot-wise, but it is aesthetically esoteric in a way that used to be synonymous with Tim Burton’s filmmaking, alive and real.