Tim Burton ghost story

Rating: 7/10 (27 October 2009)

There's nothing new about ghost stories, or even married couples who are ghosts, but there's only one Tim Burton. Here, in 1988's "Beetle Juice," he puts his own zany, delightful spin on a ghost story, complete with ghosts who try scaring people with sheets over their heads.
Adam and Barbara (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) die when their car goes over a cliff, and, returning to their house, they soon realize they didn't survive the crash. One hint was no reflections in the mirror. They find a handbook for the recently deceased. They also find a family, the Deetzes, moving into their house (Jeffrey Jones, Catherine O'Hara, and the goth-foreshadowing Winona Ryder). Adam and Barbara want the people out of their house, and when they meet their counselor from the other side (Sylvia Sidney), they learn they have to stay in the house for 125 years. They realize that they have to scare the Deetzes away. Though they have been warned against contacting the zombie Betelguese (Michael Keaton), they need help, so they call upon him. If he can't help them get rid of the Deetzes, no one can.
Bizarre, crazy film with all kinds of colorful effects and Harry Belafonte music. My mother was a great fan of Belafonte and saw him in concert; we had every one of those recordings. It was great fun hearing them again in some hilarious situations! Strangely, the actual Betelgeuse character is a small role, but Keaton is so bombastic and wild, it's enough. He's excellent. The focus of the story is on Baldwin and Davis, who are attractive and very believable as a married couple. Sylvia Sidney, Dick Cavett, and Robert Goulet have small roles, and they're all great. This was a breakout film for Winona Ryder, the only Deetz who can see the ghosts. She does a standout job, and Catherine O'Hara and Jeffrey Jones are appropriately "out there" as Mr. and Mrs. Deetz.
Few people have Tim Burton's sensibility or imagination. Sometimes I'm not sure if that's a bad thing, but there's no doubt that he's never boring. In anyone else's hands, this would have been an amusing movie. In Burton's hands, it's highly unusual.