I’ve been seeing clips from a recent stage musical based on Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, and thought I’d see how the original movie stacks up after all these years. Storytelling-wise, it stacks up damn well compared to a lot of movies I’ve watched recently. Let me explain…
Beetlejuice (1988) was the brainchild of spooky, off-beat movie director Tim Burton and gothic horror writer Michael McDowell, which was subsequently tweaked by Warren Skaaren into the dark comedy we know and love. For those who haven’t seen the film (no spoilers!), Beetlejuice follows the Maitlands, a country husband and wife (a VERY young Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) who die and haunt their beloved home, only to be horrified when New York socialites the Deetz family buy the house and turn it into a tacky, upper-class nightmare. In desperation, they turn to a “bio-exorcist” named Beetlejuice, who will scare off the unwanted family – for a price. The circuit-breaker is Lydia Deetz, who can see the Maitland ghosts as her greedy parents try to turn the home into a supernatural-themed amusement park.
The movie uses some great tricks to keep the pacing in balance. Every action and every line of dialogue, especially in the first few minutes of introducing the Maintlands and the Deetzs, works double time to communicate as much character backstory as possible, which told largely through the character relationships. The unsung hero here is Catherine O’Hara as the pretentious, neurotic artist Delia Deetz – you already know who she is and how the other Deetz members barely stand her within 60 seconds of screen time. Yet for all of this, the film takes its time to lay the groundwork, and the two families and Beetlejuice himself don’t really begin interacting until the halfway mark of the film. Another trick are the scenes of the afterlife, filled with the kooky eternal bureaucracy of the world of the dead. These scene work to snip off each section of the film and set the board for the next act, while also allowing time to skip forward se we can get right to the action.
Another thing this story does well is foreshadowing. If you keep your eyes open in the first 15-20 minutes, every scene has some little snippet that either explains an upcoming plot point or places it within the world so that it seems a natural reaction. These include musical cues, background objects, seemingly throwaway lines of dialogue – and of course Beetlejuice himself. Michael Keaton really does steal the show as Beetlejuice, the seedy, dirty, obnoxious ghost who loves to torment the living. I understand Keaton himself designed the look of Beetlejuice, as well as ad-libbing a lot of his madcap dialogue.
That said, not everything was perfect. If I have a complaint, the ending was a bit out of left field, and didn’t really seem to follow through on everything we learnt about the complex rules for being dead. While the central character development of Lydia, desperate for a normal family, connecting the with the childless and loving Maitlands, is a great arc, there wasn’t really much else going on. Things happen, but most of the characters don’t really change because of it.
These are small quibbles, though. Whether you’ve seen it a hundred times or have not yet had the pleasure, Beetlejuice is a smart, well-constructed story with great dialogue and characters – and it’s hilarious to boot!
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