Tim Burton oversees a lavish and garish horror comedy that captures the spirit of Halloween as deeply as, but no deeplier than, the Woolworth's costume department. Not for lack of expenditure. The best special effects that money can buy do not, however, come with any guarantee of charm -- one of the prime commodities of Burton's earlier work (Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, the short films Vincent and Frankenweenie) and a virtual sine qua non of this sort of supernatural whimsy. And the effects here, though far from cheap, are singularly ugly. Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Winona Ryder. (1988) — Duncan Shepherd
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