At the end, you feel exhilarated, because the cunning way Burton works is part of the joke. His innocent deviousness lifts you up high, like helium.

It's the apparitions that are the real stars: They're gross, gaudy and appropriately horrific.

While Beetlejuice will make absolutely no sense to those who demand coherence from a film, all viewers will delight in its dizzy, postliterate, postmodern style.

Michael Keaton plays Beetlejuice as a dirty old ghost, a raunchy, freelance spook who quickly proves more trouble than he's worth. It's an off-the-wall performance in an off-the-wall picture.