Beetlejuice 1988
I think I first watched this movie in Bangkok back when it came out and I don't know that I ever watched the whole thing again. A lot of people love this movie, maybe one of the first horror movies they were allowed to see. Tim Burton made a big splash with this movie, his second major movie after Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, letting him really go wild with production design, plus he paired up again with Danny Elfman for some fun music. But my common complaint with so many Tim Burton movie holds true with this one too: it is weird, colorful, and imaginative, but deeply flawed. In this case, the movie just isn't that compelling, primarily due to drab characters and minimal plot. Michael Keaton doesn't really show up until the second half of the movie. While he brings a lot of energy to the role he just isn't that funny. The main protagonists of the movie are Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, and Winona Ryder, but they are flat characters. Then a lot of the rest of human villains are just not likeable or realistic. Nobody is relateable or has a spark of humanity. A lot of the movie is driven by special effects, which given the year it was made, are mostly practical effects that haven't aged well and look gimmicky. It still has some fun exploring the world of the recently deceased, but the payoff is minimal. At the end, our protagonist ghosts seem to be dying, but then they somehow get better. The movie ends with Winona Ryder clearly hanging from a wire and pretending to dance: another poorly executed effect.
Written: 27 Nov 2024
Owned on: Digital