Beetlejuice
March 30, 1988 in theaters
A recently deceased couple haunts their beloved country home but proves too polite to drive out the new family that has moved in -- so they reluctantly summon a chaotic freelance bio-exorcist named Betelgeuse. Tim Burton's 1988 comedy is a joyfully anarchic haunted-house film built around Michael Keaton's career-defining performance as a grotesque, irrepressible agent of mayhem.
Cast
Director
TRAILER
QUOTE
"Nice f***ing model!"
DID YOU KNOW?
The film was shot in 30 days on a modest budget of $15 million and grossed over $73 million domestically -- launching Tim Burton into the A-list.
THE VERDICT
Synthesized from published reviews
Tim Burton's breakthrough film -- a gleefully anarchic haunted-house comedy that works because it treats death as an inconvenience rather than a tragedy. The Maitlands are likably useless ghosts, the Deetzes are perfect nouveau-riche foils, and Winona Ryder's Lydia is the film's genuine heart. Michael Keaton appears for only seventeen minutes of screen time and spends every one of them at absolute maximum chaos -- a performance so committed it became one of the defining comedic characters of the decade.
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