Beetlejuice

McDowall deftly keeps one foot in the here and the other in the hereafter, which allows Burton a unique opportunity to juggle two sets of funhouse effects.

Hilarious…The joy of Beetlejuice is its completely bizarre -- but perfectly realized -- view of the world, a la Gary Larson's "The Far Side," or "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." [1 Apr 1988]

Beetlejuice means something good: that imaginative artists can bring a fading genre back from the dead. [11 Apr 1988]

Beetlejuice springs to life when the raucous and repulsive Betelgeuse (Keaton) rises from his moribund state to wreak havoc on fellow spooks and mortal enemies.

A surreal, demented delight.

The screenplay is foolish and Michael Keaton overplays the title role badly, but director Tim Burton gives the comedy a heap of visual imagination. [22 Apr 1988]

It's two hours of your life wasted, time once spent that can never be regained. Don't go. Don't do it. [30 Mar 1988]

Genuinely one of the best movies from the 80s one of Tim Burtons best movies and one of Micheal Keaton's best roles and performances imo this movie has aged incredibly well and is a movie that is a must watch that I think everybody should see at least once

I enjoyed this Tim Burton movie it was not the best. I have watched but I enjoyed it much. I think the biggest problem is that the characters that are interesting like Amanda and Beetlejuice has very little screen town to the main couple that is just always there and not that interesting I understand they are supposed to be our point of view characters, but they are just not that interesting.

Bottom line: Classic Tim Burton film that makes for a solid evening around Halloween. Adam (Baldwin) and Barbara (Davis) Maitland are a young, recently married couple. They are vacationing at home and make the quick trip to the local hardware store. On their way back they crash off a bridge into a river. Somehow, they walk back to their house (though they don’t exactly remember how) and, drenched, they try to dry off and warm next to the fire they don’t remember starting. They soon realize they drowned in the river and are now ghosts. They still want to try and live, or exist, happily in their home. Unfortunately, a new family (the Deetz’s) from New York buys the house and starts to move in. The Maitland’s decide to haunt the house to scare away the unwelcome residents. After repeated failures, they resort to calling Betelgeuse (Keaton), a freelancer who turns out to be far more trouble than he’s worth. Beetle Juice is, for me, one of those movies that you actually sit down and watch once but you see it in parts here and there. I first saw Beetle Juice when I was little and I thought it was creepy and somehow depressing. After re-watching it just the other day, I still think it is creepy and depressing but I will say that it is good. The acting is really rather good. I had forgotten that it was starring a very young Alec Baldwin. As soon as he spoke, I did a double take and thought, “I think I recognize that amazing voice.” Michael Keaton does a really good job at creating Betelgeuse a unique character. I didn’t realize it was him until I looked at the credits. It was like learning that Tim Curry played Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King’s It. It is a combination of makeup and acting to create something new. Winona Ryder fits perfectly into the aesthetic of the film. It made me wonder why she didn’t do more stuff with Tim Burton. Beetle Juice is one of the few movies that ends with a dancing sequence that I don’t particularly find offensive. Lydia received an “A” on her Chemistry paper so the Maitland’s possess the house so it plays Harry Belafonte’s “Jump In The Line” and possess Lydia to make her float in the air and dance. Many of the dancing sequences I’ve seen use the opportunity to cycle through the characters as they dance to show their status. In Beetle Juice, we cycle through the characters but they aren’t dancing. They are just doing what they would normally be doing: Lydia’s mom is sculpting some modern art and Lydia’s father is reading. It is mildly silly but it isn’t going for a zany ending. Overall, I’d recommend Beetle Juice if you haven’t seen it before but, considering it has been on TV about a million times, you probably have. Would I recommend you see it again? If it is Halloween time, sure, why not? It isn’t a scary movie and in terms of humor, it’s alright. I didn’t laugh out loud but chuckled here and there.

This movie doesn't make sense. It's similar to Edward Scissorhands, but the characters in this movie aren't interesting. This movie isn't scary or funny. The only reason I can see someone wanting to watch this movie is just to appreciate the sheer absurdity that Tim Burton poured into this film.

I just watched this for the first time last night (2024-09-06). I would have been a junior in high school when this came out, and I only vaguely remember people talking about it. Yet watching it I felt like I had seen every single sight gag. IDK how that's possible. Does this movie have any characters? Who are they? What were they doing before the movie started? What psychological change did they undergo in the course of the... I want to say story, but does that even apply here? Also, if everyone is only yelling all the time, is anyone yelling? Is anything emotionally heightened in a 90-minute emotional monotone? Those poor actors. There is so much comedic talent in the cast. But none of them is funny in this movie. Didn't crack a smile, and I was so open/receptive to all things spooky, whimsical, silly, gross, scary... whatever. Prior to dinner, we had just come from the grocery store where we spent too long looking at this year's Halloween cards. My wife and I each bought a couple, and we also got a few Halloween decorations. So we were feeling corny and Halloweeny - down for whatever. This reminds me of all the other inexplicably overhyped movies from the 1980s where it seems like everyone from screenwriter to editor was on a cocaine bender. There is lots of cursing and **** humor. The content is trashy but the tone is peurile. It's as if the target audience is nine-year-old felons who just got out of prison and are READY TO FUUUUUCK. Maybe that's what they told Jeffrey Jones to get him to come onboard. (His home computer desk is just two sawhorses and a board). See, THAT'S a joke. Two if you count the pun. You don't just make up stuff from your precious, I'm-the-creative-one, mommy-says-I'm-the-smartest-boy, overgrown head. You hook into a STORY. If want to show teeth, you bite INTO SOMETHING. Apart from farts and slapstick, humor needs an object, and it's hard to find one in a world with no rules, a gathering with no relationships, and course of surprising events with no **** this comedy is grimly unfunny. It really only has style to stand on, and it feels so tin-eared regarding tone. I suspect that Tim Burton is very good with (1) a sketchpad, and (2) Hollywood power meetings. Maybe he didn't start to learn about story until after this movie? This movie is so dreary and awful. 90 minutes felt like an 8-hour car ride with the loudest, most insensitive, most intolerable person I can imagine. We would have bailed out but my wife and I each tolerated it for the sake of the other - so at least there was one funny joke in the course of the movie. Our cat watched it with us, and he seemed genuinely interested at a few points. I give Beetlejuice one point for him, since he so far hasn't learned to post his own review. Hard to believe this is the same director - and some of the same cast - who made the funny, touching, charming Ed **** picked this as our Friday-night-home movie because it's impossible to get away from the advertising around the new Beetlejuice movie. We thought, why don't we watch the original now, and the new one closer to Halloween. In a way I think the time for this kind of movie has finally come - people have infantile attention spans and current media is better suited to contextless sight gags. If it's anything like the original, they should release the sequel as a series of TikToks.