BEETLEJUICE is Tim Burton at his best

Give it up for the ghost with the most.

This may cost me my Gen X card – and it will definitely never put me on a valued shopper’s list at Hot Topic – but I’m not much of a Tim Burton fan. 

Oh, there are films of his that I like. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure gets a lot of play in our house. Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood are classics. And, while they’re flawed, I have some affection for Sweeney Todd, Mars Attacks! and Sleepy Hollow. But I’d say that when Burton releases a film – especially in recent years – the odds are about 60-40 that I’m not going to like it. And there are several movies – Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo, Dark Shadows, Planet of the Apes, and Charlie and Chocolate Factory – that I straight out detest.I don’t even care that much for Burton’s Batman movies. I get his appeal, and when he’s on, he can be fun. But there are few more excruciating chores than sitting through a bad Tim Burton movie¹. 

All this is a long preamble as to why it’s taken me 35 years to rewatch Beetlejuice. 

I’d definitely seen Beetlejuice before. I have a very vivid memory of being 10 years old and my friend suggested we rent it for a sleepover. To the credit of that childhood viewing, there were several sequences that stayed with me – most notably the sandworms, the Maitlands aging rapidly during the exorcism sequence, and Beetlejuice dropping an F-bomb and honking his crotch (PG meant something different back then, kids). I think it actually scared me, so I never really felt like revisiting it; when I became an adult, the bloom was so off the rose on Burton that I never felt a desire to go back. I decided to rewatch it last week in preparation for screening this week’s sequel (review Friday!). 

And, guys, why did I wait so long? Beetlejuice is a delight, and I think it’s easily my favorite Burton movie. 

The story by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson (the screenplay is credited to McDowell and Warren Skaaren) offers a fun premise: what if a haunted house movie, but the protagonists were ghosts whose home was haunted by the living? That’s the predicament Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) find themselves in after they accidentally die when their car goes off the town bridge. Their beautiful Connecticut home is soon occupied by the Deetz family, including beleaguered dad Charles (Jeffrey Jones), the artistic and pretentious Delia (Catherine O’ Hara), their flamboyant interior designer Otho (Glenn Shaddix), and their disaffected goth daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder). Adam and Barbara now have to learn to navigate the (literally) hellish bureaucracy of the underworld and fend off aggressive pitches from a malevolent trickster demon named Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) who claims to be a “bio-exorcist.” 

Looking back on the list of Burton films to which I respond positively, I notice that they’re all either his overt comedies or his dramas that have a streak of pitch black humor. Beetlejuice moves with the manic pacing of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, the style of Nightmare Before Christmas and the gleeful gallows humor of Mars Attacks. Its tone is strictly sitcom style, but one written by Stephen King, in which causes of death are visual gags and a character ripping off their face and letting their eyeballs dangle from the sockets is a punchline. 

The film is aggressively weird, but never drowning in angst (the problem I have with too many Burton movies). Its style dances with darkness instead of wallowing – the more gruesome and grotesque the gags get, the funnier they become. The dry humor in giving the Maitlands a “Handbook for the Recently Deceased” is elevated when they find themselves in an afterlife waiting room; I could probably watch the film a dozen times and still identify new causes of death among its occupants (my favorite is either the shrunken head, the guy who turns being pancaked by a car into an ability to fit into tight spaces, or the Maitlands’ case worker inhaling smoke and exhaling it through a slit throat). There’s an offhand remark from one of the living characters that suicides are consigned to civil service in the afterlife, and then we learn it is, indeed, filled with people dangling from nooses or working with slit wrists. It sounds grim, but Burton’s delivery makes it funnier with each reveal. 

Roger Ebert praised the film’s conceit but remarked that it was too interested in gimmicks to create memorable characters. And it’s true that the script seems more interested in exploring new ideas and gags than in crafting a coherent story; the Maitlands switch from inept to expert haunters within the space of a scene, and a major character’s suicidal tendencies are quickly brushed off and forgotten. But while the screenplay isn’t Beetlejuice’s strongest suit, I have to admit that these things never bothered me. Beetlejuice moves quickly – remember when comedies were regularly 90 minutes? – and races through its sequences so briskly that it feels like a live-action cartoon, and it’s best enjoyed as that. 

It’s certainly a reminder that, in his prime, few popular directors were as visually interesting as Burton. Beetlejuice looks amazing. Its tone is established in its opening credits, as the camera flies over a cozy Connecticut town and then seamlessly switches to a model house on a hill with a giant spider climbing on its roof. Working with cinematographer Thomas E. Ackerman, Burton creates a cliche, normal American small town and then has a blast digging into the colorful, bizarre afterlife beneath its surface. Working with giant sets, stop-motion animation (those sandworms!) and intricate practical effects, there’s a hand-crafted beauty that only adds to its off-kilter tone. Burton may not have come up with the film’s idea or written the screenplay, but its iconography – the angles straight out of German expressionism, nods to classic horror movies, macabre sight gags – feels like the purest distillation of what he would both refine and run into the ground over the course of his career. 

Like I said, one of my frustrations with Burton is his tendency to overload his films with angst. Beetlejuice may have a moody character – Ryder’s Lydia set the template for goth teens to come – but it’s devoid of any brooding or gloom (not an easy feat when your main characters have recently died). Beetlejuice is silly, inventive and funny, and I laughed just as much at its dialogue as I did at the audacity of its visuals and every new reveal, everything moved along briskly by Danny Elfman’s jaunty score.

It helps that the cast is game for everything. We’ll get to Mr. Juice himself in a minute, but anyone talking about this movie who isn’t in awe of Catherine O’ Hara isn’t paying attention. She strikes every right note as a pretentious, vacuous artist; I’ve only seen a handful of episodes of Schitt’s Creek, but this all feels like it was a dry run for what she’d do there. The famous “Banana Boat Song” sequence would fall flat on its face if she didn’t dive into it so fully; O’ Hara is amazing, and key to the film working. Likewise, Ryder is probably the model from which Daria and other aloof teens sprung from in the ‘90s, but there’s a curiosity and excitement she brings that others tend to dampen in these roles. I buy that Lydia is bored with her life and more interested in the dark and macabre; I also believe that she’s a teenage girl just looking for parental figures who will pay attention to her, which she finds in the Maitlands. Shadix is devious and flamboyant as Otho, and while Jeffrey Jones later revealed himself to be a scumbag, I have to admit that he’s very funny as the dad who just wants to sit down with a book or watch the birds while chaos erupts around him. Baldwin and Davis are basically playing the straight roles here, but there’s a dorkiness to Baldwin that he hasn’t really brought to his other comedic roles (which depend on more of an aggro, overly confident buffoonery). Davis is the heart of the film, but she’s really good with her dry deliveries. 

But, of course, it’s Michael Keaton who steals the show. I’d forgotten how little Betelgeuse is actually in the film; his screen time was reportedly about 15 minutes. And that’s probably for the best. Keaton dominating this entire film would suffocate it; but used sparingly, it’s one of the great ‘80s comedic performances. I said the entire film plays as a cartoon, but it hits a whole other gear in Keaton’s scenes. Betelgeuse is like a mashup of Robin Williams, a used car salesman and Tyler Durden. He’s vile, sexually aggressive, malevolent and potentially deadly. He shifts voices and changes shape in the space of a second. He’s gross and crude, and yet there’s just enough twinkle in the eye for you to kind of like him because Keaton is just so good at this. He’s politically incorrect and, in the kids’ parlance, ready for cancellation, but the film so clearly positions him as vile that it’s funny in its loathsomeness. When Keaton’s lathered in makeup and prosthetics in the climax, turning into a living carnival ride, it’s a delirious, hilarious and impressive visual feat. 

I’m delighted how much fun I had revisiting Beetlejuice, and as I write this a few days prior to my screening, I’m excited about the sequel rather than viewing it as obligatory. It’s been a very long time since Tim Burton has been this much fun. I’m hoping maybe that spark will return when he turns the Juice loose again. 

1. I know some of you are going to ask “What about The Nightmare Before Christmas?” Fair enough. I love Nightmare; it’s legit great. But while Burton gets credit for the idea and designs, I think time has revealed just how essential director Henry Selick was to that film’s success.