Not good enough

Rating: 6/10 (9 September 2012)

Death is a strange thing in cinema because every filmmaker decides their own way of presenting the afterlife. In "Beetlejuice", Tim Burton has young married couple Adam and Barbara Maitland killed in a car accident in the first ten minutes of that film. Before they died, they moved into a large country house with the intention of fixing it up a bit. Now that they have died and are ghosts, an annoyed new family named the Deetzs' have moved into their house and the Maitlands want them out. They learn about a "bio-exorcist" who they want to hire to scare the people away. This just creates problems however. The story continues and they become friends with Deetzs' daughter Lydia who has more in common with the ghosts than her own family. Unfortunately, the movie isn't as worthwhile as it may sound because the majority of the characters just aren't interesting enough to hold the movie together. Also, with the incantations and all the references to the supernatural, it isn't even close to my Christian values. However, it is a silly movie, all done tongue-in-cheek and shouldn't be taken seriously. Still, there isn't much of a reason to see it other than Michael Keaton's insane performance as Betelgeuse which is quite fun to watch although he wasn't in it as much as I would have liked. And as always, Tim Burton's crazy visuals and ideas are always original.