TIM BURTON DIRECTING MICHAEL KEATON AS 'BEETLEJUICE'

Title: BEETLEJUICE Year: 1988 Rating: ****1/2

In Tim Burton's BEETLEJUICE, the King King Mark... that point when the titular creature finally shows up, in both cases exactly after forty-five minutes... provides an equal anticipation for the leading characters and the audience...

The audience is waiting for comic actor Michael Keaton to steal the movie, and the young married couple... who died and have become ghosts... needs him to save their perfect dream house...

Jeffrey Jones in BEETLEJUICE

Doomed from the start because Michael Keaton's energetic, game-show-host-from-hell BEETLEJUICE is nothing but trouble... the epitome of a tour-de-force performance that no one else could have pulled off, he's also the single greatest strategically-timed characters ever created...

Since most of the plot-line's centered on Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin's afterlife struggles, consisting of Burton's storybook Gothic aesthetic, which (as is his forte) makes the weirdest things seem completely normal...

Michael Keaton in BEETLEJUICE

Having broken into show business legitimizing another hyperactive comedian in PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, Burton has Keaton proverbially riding shotgun in what's  Alec and Geena's purgatory adventure, that includes an afterlife social worker's office (featuring veteran-actress Sylvia Sidney with helpful exposition) and a waiting room as if Hammer Films created the STAR WARS Cantina...

But the newly-deceased couple's real motivation (as Baldwin's never been so averagely likable and Davis is as beautifully lovable as ever) are futile attempts to spook an eclectic New York City family out of the house: using their own extremely limited devices...

From Tim Burton's BEETLEJUICE

Nearly impossible since neurotically pretentious, wannabe yuppie sculptor Catherine O'Hara's too busy morphing the old fashion domicile into a Gothic New Age manor (with the help of a flamboyant interior decorator), much to husband Jeffrey Jones's chagrin while lonely dark-horse teenager Winona Ryder remains the couple's sole ally...

Ultimately a different kind of underdog damsel-in-distress, providing the good ghosts someone to protect against Keaton's menacing (yet still hilarious) sexed-up third-act motivation: catapulting BEETLEJUICE from an offbeat-horror into the kind of race-against-time thriller that's never been equaled (or successfully imitated) thereafter.

Tim Burton credited in BEETLEJUICE

Michael Keaton in BEETLEJUICE

Glenn Shadix and Winona Ryder in BEETLEJUICE

Patrice Martinez (Three Amigos) in BEETLEJUICE

Catherine O'Hara and Dick Cavett in BEETLEJUICE

Adele Lutz and Glenn Shadix in BEETLEJUICE

Winona Ryder in BEETLEJUICE

Winona Ryder in BEETLEJUICE

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in BEETLEJUICE

Jeffrey Jones in BEETLEJUICE

Annie McEnroe in BEETLEJUICE

Geena Davis in BEETLEJUICE

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in BEETLEJUICE

From BEETLEJUICE

Catherine O'Hara in BEETLEJUICE

Winona Ryder in BEETLEJUICE

Carmen Filipi in BEETLEJUICE

Geena Davis in BEETLEJUICE

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in BEETLEJUICE with Douglas Turner

From BEETLEJUICE

Cindy Daly in BEETLEJUICE

Susan Kellermann, Catherine O'Hara and Adele Lutz in BEETLEJUICE

Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis and Michael Keaton in BEETLEJUICE

Michael Keaton in BEETLEJUICE

Geena Davis in BEETLEJUICE

Alec Baldwin in BEETLEJUICE

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in BEETLEJUICE