Beetle Juice (1988)

Directed by: Tim Burton | 92 minutes | action, horror, comedy, adventure | Actors: Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Annie McEnroe, Maurice Page, Hugo Stanger, Michael Keaton, Rachel Mittelman, Catherine O’Hara, Jeffrey Jones, Winona Ryder, Glenn Shadix

Leave it to Tim Burton to make the world of the dead more interesting and entertaining than the world of the living. The director has always been drawn to dark characters and stories and with ‘Beetle Juice’ he can pull out all the stops. Beetlejuice, a frantic role of a heavily painted-on Michael Keaton, leaps through the film like a distasteful, flippant, but somehow charming little devil, waiting for someone to say his name three times in a row so that he’s completely free. can go with his puppet show and terrify the living. But this is not a horror movie. Initially, Wes Craven was supposed to direct the film, but Burton realized the comic potential of the story and saw it as an opportunity to pour some gruesome and macabre jokes on the viewer. The fact that the film is also cheerful and sympathetic is a welcome bonus.

‘Beetle Juice’ is clearly a Burton film, both in terms of its own preference for certain characters, as well as the theme and look of the film. The dejected “Goth” daughter Lydia, with monotonous voice and bags up to her ankles, is one of the heroines of the film, the one who is open to the other dimension and immediately knows how to make contact with the deceased couple in the new house. , played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis. The latter are also among the sympathetic characters. They become the ghosts who try to scare away the new (living) inhabitants, but whatever they try: walking around headless, peeling the skin off their skulls: the new inhabitants, icy sculptor Delia (Catherine O’Hara) and the indifferent Charles (Jeffrey Jones) just don’t see them. Until the couple calls for help, after first sitting in a kind of waiting room for the dead – where all kinds of strange-looking creatures and dead people reside – of Beetlejuice herself. This little man is a kind of anti-exorcist: he does not cast out ghosts for the living, but the living for ghosts.

The waiting room of the dead, the twilight dimension of giant sandworms Adam and Barbara find themselves in when they leave their home, and the antics of Beetlejuice herself, provide ample opportunities for Burton to unleash his unbridled imagination once again. That means dead people with tiny heads, green-skinned receptionists, Barbara with a huge bird’s beak and tongue with eyes on it, and a banister that turns into a giant snake with a demonic face with sharp teeth. Burton’s predilection for expressionism is also beautifully reflected in the skewed decors in a corridor of the waiting room.

The blue-screen shots are (nowadays) very noticeable and animals like the sandworms are not that scary, but the stop-motion animation is always interesting to see in action. This handicraft always keeps its own charm. There’s also quite a bit of merriment in the film through the dance/music scenes, like the one where an entire table of guests literally gets possessed and performs an idiotic dance, at first against their will but then diligently, with buttocks shaking and arms swinging. . The role of Beetlejuice is Michael Keaton’s most bizarre performance ever, and he gives himself completely. Not always to make you laugh, but always with an admirable and infectious energy. It becomes a true anti-hero, but it’s nice that the normal ghosts Barbara and Adam also deserve the director’s sympathy and ultimate preference. There appears to be a fairly conventional warmth in the film, which is even somewhat touching. After all, Barbara and Adam want a child – and hadn’t yet managed to do so together – and in fact adopt the depressed Lydia, who herself needs parental figures who understand and clearly care about her. It’s a pity that the eventual real appearance of Beetlejuice – and his promised anarchic rollercoaster ride – turns out to be quite anticlimactic and the whole thing is solved by means of an abrupt “deus ex machina” construction, but the film as a whole is very entertaining nonetheless , and extraordinarily original. It is a unique film that is dryly comical, lugubrious, bizarre, but also endearing. So a real Burton.