Blu-ray Movie Reviews

What's a couple of stay-at-home ghosts to do when their beloved home is taken over by trendy yuppies? They call on "Beetlejuice", the afterlife's freelance bio-exorcist to scare off the family - and everyone gets more than she, he or it bargains for!

Tim Burton’s ghost with the most is always a lot of fun and it’s been years since I’ve seen this one. The comedy still holds up well though the production design is showing its age. Still, this makes a great catalog release for the Halloween season for the whole family.

Warner delivers a very film-like Blu-ray encode for this one that will probably split audiences. For film purists the encode offers a very natural transfer complete with film grain and a slightly dated appearance. Detail wavers a bit but fine detail is close ups looks well enough. Colors have that glaring 80’s quality to them, but not much you can do about that. Burton’s vision still holds up quite well in the make-up department but the effects work is definitely dated. Overall the video is good, but not quite the homerun I was hoping for.

Thankfully Warner has included a lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix for this one. The soundtrack has a dated quality to it but the score is fun and the musical selections have always been pretty amusing. Dialogue sounds very natural in tone but the dynamic range of the soundtrack as a whole is a bit weak. Some of the music sounds distant in relation to the rest of the mix and most of the sound effects come off as gimmicky. The soundstage has an open quality to it but surround use is underwhelming in the more exciting sequences.

Extras include three episodes from the short lived daytime cartoon, which is a bit weird for such a cult classic film. There is also an isolated music track for Elfman’s score and the theatrical trailer. A second disc is also included with selections from the film’s soundtrack on CD.

This has always been one of the funner Burton films and it was nice to revisit. I love Keaton’s work in this one and the inventiveness of the characters. The presentation is about average but I think the limitations have more to do with the production than the mastering.