video review : Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

video review : Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

This sequel, which fans of the original had to wait 36 years for, is abysmally disappointing during its first half. It isn’t until Beetlejuice; the title cleverly makes way for a future trilogy; is conjured that the plot starts to come to life. It’s still a stupid movie; a definite drop down from the aforementioned original; but there are wacky bits of fun buried about.

my rating : 2 of 5

2024

video review : Beetlejuice

video review : Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice is supposed to be funny. It occasionally is; “I’ve been feeling a little flat”, says a man who looks like he was killed by a steamroller; but the nonstop jokes, led by its title comedian slash “bio-exorcist”, are mostly corny. The two lip-synced song/dance scenes; easily the worst parts of the movie; are downright cringey. A moderately entertaining plot, about a dead married couple trying to scare a family out of their house, lies (buried) underneath.

my rating : 3 of 5

1988

video review : Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

video review : Big Eyes

video review : Big Eyes

Margaret Keane is supposed to be a victim. Her husband defrauded the public by taking credit for her art and selling it as his, but it’s hard to feel sorry for her because she went along with it for financial gain albeit in 1950s America, where women artists weren’t taken seriously.

Sexual equality is a major theme in this slightly campy biography, which, with its simple storyline, serves as one of Tim Burton’s more cohesive, thus enjoyable, movies. It’s called Big Eyes, by the way, because of the peculiar way Keane’s art depicts the faces of its kid subjects.

my rating : 3 of 5

2014

video review : Edward Scissorhands

video review : Edward Scissorhands

Edward has scissors for hands, but no one ever says why. All his backstory explains is that the scissors, which, like his mountain home and the personalities of the people in the surrounding neighborhood he eventually pierces, are largely exaggerated, were supposed to be temporary. The man who invented him died just before putting on his hands.

Not that it matters much. Scissorhands, a well-mannered ghost of a man dressed in all leather like a slave in a bondage session, is more annoying than intriguing and I don’t care anything about him. Even when a plot finally begins to develop, it’s all in vain. The fairy tale epilogue, which explains the origin of snow in pastel Suburbia, is cute though.

my rating : 2 of 5

1990

video review : Alice In Wonderland

video review : Alice In Wonderland

There’s nothing wonderful about Tim Burton’s adaption of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, a fantasy novel by Lewis Carroll. It’s one of the most popular children’s stories American culture has to offer. I remember attending a stage play version of it in elementary school. I don’t remember it being this bad.

This is a movie without a clear plot. The visuals; the costumes and set designs that make-up Wonderland; are artsy and imaginative. That’s something a Tim Burton presentation basically guarantees. The story, however, which lands a girl named Alice in an impossible dreamworld of sorts, fails to captivate or intrigue.

The characterization is even worse. I especially hate the incredibly annoying Mad Hatter and the cringe-inducing Futterwacken dance he does, which an otherwise likeable Alice mimics near the end. It’s just stupid and pointless as is the whole movie. Shame on Tim Burton for ruining my childhood memories.

my rating : 1 of 5

2010
 

Andrew J. Holliday :

“It’s one of the most popular children’s stories American culture has to offer.”

American culture? Alice in Wonderland? American? Like that other US classic, The Wind in the Willows….