Still Weird, Still Funny and Still Completely Its Own Thing
Nerdy Up North
The setup
After dying in a car accident, Adam and Barbara Maitland discover they are trapped in their home as ghosts. When the Deetz family moves in and starts changing everything they loved about the place, the Maitlands turn to a chaotic bio exorcist called Beetlejuice for help. It goes about as well as you would expect.
Beetlejuice is one of those films where the world is probably more memorable than the actual plot, and I mean that in the best way. The story itself is really simple. A nice couple dies, annoying people move into their house and they make a terrible decision while trying to scare them out. That simplicity gives Tim Burton loads of room to make everything around it as strange as possible.
The afterlife is still brilliant. The waiting room, the case workers, the sandworms, the model town and all the different dead people are full of little ideas that make you want to know more without the film stopping every five minutes to explain the rules. It just shows you something bizarre and moves on.
Michael Keaton is barely in the film when you actually add his screen time up, but he completely takes over whenever he appears. Beetlejuice is disgusting, funny, unpredictable and obviously somebody you should never trust. Keaton throws so much into the performance that it feels like he has been in the entire movie when he really hasn't.
Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin are important because they keep the film grounded. Adam and Barbara are such a painfully nice couple that putting them in the middle of all this madness works perfectly. Winona Ryder is great as Lydia too. Under all the goth style and deadpan lines there is a genuinely sad kid who feels more comfortable around the dead than she does with her own family.
Catherine O'Hara nearly steals the film as Delia. She is ridiculous, selfish and exhausting, but she is also hilarious. The dinner scene with Day-O is still one of those scenes where the second the music starts you know exactly what film you are watching.
The practical effects and stop motion are a massive part of why Beetlejuice still looks like Beetlejuice. Some of it is obviously dated, but I would take those jerky handmade effects over something perfectly clean and digital any day. It gives the whole thing a personality that would be very easy to lose.
Danny Elfman's score deserves just as much credit. From the opening music onwards it sounds like somebody has turned a haunted house into an orchestra. The music, production design and effects all work together so well that the film has its own language.
There is also a surprisingly sweet bit of heart underneath it all. Adam and Barbara wanted a family and by the end they have basically become Lydia's other parents. For a film full of dead people, possession and a perverted ghost, it ends up being weirdly wholesome.
Positives
Michael Keaton is unforgettable, brilliant practical effects and stop motion, Danny Elfman's score, Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara, fantastic afterlife worldbuilding, loads of personality.
Negatives
A few effects show their age and Beetlejuice himself is intentionally horrible enough that some of his behaviour is much rougher than the rest of the film.
Verdict
Beetlejuice still feels like nothing else. It is funny, creepy, colourful and completely committed to being weird. The fact that Keaton can dominate a film while barely being in it says everything about how strong the character is, but the Maitlands, Lydia and Delia are what give all the madness something to hang on to.
