Details from IMDB:
Beetlejuice
The spirits of a deceased couple are harassed by an unbearable family that has moved into their home, and hire a malicious spirit to drive them out.
Initial Thoughts:
As I made a mistake and didn’t post my Batman movie review last week, this will be 3 posts in one day! A treat for readers (Hi John!) and more content than usual for me in one day, so double win! As I mentioned in my review of the sequel my wife hadn’t seen the original and I wanted to refresh my memory before seeing the second, so I watched this again for the first time in over 25 years and finally get to do a review on it.
Main Points:
I’m going to get this out of the way, I know this is a beloved classic and I will always have a fondness for the film but it hasn’t aged well. I had forgotten how Beetlejuice was a really creepy pervert (including wanting to marry a 16 year old girl) and how uncomfortable the treatment of mental issues was handled. Lydia has written a suicide note and it’s completely made light of. Yes I know that it is a comedy and it was the 80s but still it never should have been in there and is, obviously, one of the less funny parts of the movie. The pacing is also quite slow and Beetlejuice is barely in it! All right I’m not a hater so I’ll stop, I’ll finish with I think it’s a product of it’s time and creates problems when you watch it now.
This is a very creative movie and once Beetlejuice gets on the screen it is some good dark comedy. Keaton does a great job, as do Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara. The “Day-O” possession scene is a LOT of fun and I think the highlight of the movie. I love the idea of small town America having creepy secrets and the idea of speaking a creatures name having consequences is a great idea that goes back a very long way. There are some great practical effects here, for the time, and some do hold up. Burton’s concept of the afterlife is wacky and fun idea bot in how ghosts work and what the afterlife looks like for ghosts (the government-type building I mean).
Final Thoughts:
It’s a great example of how not only how times change but how people change. I was 12 years old when I saw this movie in theatres (it was only PG, though should have been PG-13) and was in many was a very different person than I am now at 48. I can recapture my childlike sense of wonder and excitement but I just don’t have the attention spa of even a 38 year old and this movie felt pretty slow to me now. As I mentioned above I found the effects, and some story elements are a little hard to watch now, my ideas (and the world’s) have changed a lot now. All that said, I did still enjoy it but would have to pick it as not as good as the sequel, I will give it just 7 out of 10. It certainly has it’s charm and it’s still some fun to watch, so see it if you can before you watch the sequel and you can see how the story grows and changes with the times, if not watch it sometime when you’re in the mood to see how movies were done in the 80s, it’s a trip (as people used to say) for sure.