Dead funny

Rating: 9/10 (13 September 2012)

When Adam and Barbara Maitland crash their car into the river they don't know how they got back home at first; then they realise they did not survive the crash! Being dead is rather confusing even when you have the handbook. They soon figure out they can't leave the house and that doesn't seem too bad until the house is sold to the Deetz family. The Maitlands take an instant disliking to Delia Deetz in particular as she sets about deciding what alterations she must have done to make the house habitable. They attempt to scare her and her husband but they can't see them. The only person who can see them is their daughter Lydia Deetz. She tells her parents about the ghosts but obviously they don't believe her... until they put on a show during the middle of a dinner party; far from scaring them off though they think having a haunted house might be an opportunity! The Maitlands seek help, first from their afterlife case worker Juno then from Bio-Exorcist Betelgeuse (pronounced Beetle Juice). He seems more of a danger to them than the Deetz family though!
This film is a lot of fun in the slightly dark way one would expect from a Tom Burton film. Michael Keaton puts in a delightfully over the top performance in the title role; having seen this I'm surprised that Burton didn't cast him as The Joker in his 'Batman' film! Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are good as the Maitlands although playing ordinary people (how just happen to be dead) they get less opportunities to show what they can do. Winona Ryder is great as Lydia; one of her earliest roles and probably the one that got her noticed by the film going public. Other notable performances come from Catherine O'Hara and Jeffery Jones as Delia and Charles Deetz and Glenn Shadix who plays Delia's strange decorator/guru Otho. The film is full of great special effects; no CGI here; just great make-up, stop go animation and puppetry. Burton's regular collaborator Danny Elfman's music fits the film perfectly. The film is definitely a comedy but there are some scary moments and a little bit of swearing that means it might not be suitable for younger children... the film may be rated '15' here in the UK but I suspect if it gets re-certificated one day it will be lowered to '12' given that it is much tamer than many '12' rated films.