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BEETLEJUICE
December 2, 2017  | By David Bianculli

IFC, 8:00 p.m. ET

 

Other people wrote the story and screenplay for this 1988 fantasy comedy, but director Tim Burton and actor Michael Keaton basically made it all theirs – Burton with his wild visuals, Keaton with his equally wild energy. There are plenty of reasons to revisit this film, starting with the set piece in which the new family moving into a haunted house has a dinner party disrupted by an involuntary rendition of Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song).” But there’s so much more to appreciate: Winona Ryder as the lonely teen who not only sees the ghosts, but likes them – and, as the ghosts who summon Keaton’s malevolent spirit to help with more frightening ideas for house-haunting, Geena Davis and, in one of his first screen roles, Alec Baldwin.

 
 
 
 
 
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