Review by John P. Harvey.

In anticipation of Beetlejuice 2, Tim Burton’s first feature film in five years, Dendy is running a Tim Burton retrospective.  Burton’s directorial oeuvre includes a wide variety: from novel-based fantasy adventures, such as Alice in Wonderland (2010), Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016), and Dumbo (2019), to action crime — Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992) — to speculative fiction, as in Mars Attacks! (1996) and Planet of the Apes (2001), and expanding on dark legends, as in Sleepy Hollow (1999) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007).  Occasionally his films have even included relatively ordinary worlds, as in Ed Wood (1994) and Big Eyes (2014).

With rare exception, Burton’s films remain memorable and yet continually surprising in their visual styles, commonly incorporating flying views, floating characters, bizarre characters, and intense colours, and many of his earliest films retain a freshness today that comes of a mix of well-paced plotting, characters’ energy, and an underlying sense of fun in each story.  And one of his most well-defined trademarks is the common zaniness of his films’ characters, settings, and humour.

Beetlejuice 2, or Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, is sure to have many of these characteristics.  Films such as the original Beetlejuice (1988), Corpse Bride (2005), Alice in Wonderland (2010), Dark Shadows (2012), and Frankenweenie (2012) remind us of the kind of treat that we can expect from Burton’s phantasmagories, and they remain as fresh — and in some cases as ripe — today as they have ever been.

The Tim Burton retrospective is screening at Dendy cinemas.