Film Review
Director Tim Burton may have scored a box office hit with his feature
debut
Pee-wee's Big Adventure
(1985) but it wasn't until he made his next film,
Beetlejuice, that he showed his
true creative flair and established himself as one of America's most
promising young filmmakers.
Beetlejuice
is a film where anything seems to be possible (budget and
censorship permitting) - a mad comicbook fantasy that is as insane as
it is funny. Distinguished by some imaginative special effects
work and a story so off-the-wall that its writers must either be
certifiable or creative geniuses, it is a film that revels in its own
eccentricity and appears to have cult classic stamped on every
frame. For any devotee of the bizarre and unexpected, this film
is a ghoulish mind-bending romp with an irresistible appeal.
Even for those familiar with Burton's next few features,
Batman (1989) and
Edward Scissorhands (1990),
this one is mind-bogglingly weird.
Beetlejuice is a pretty
blatant tribute to all those low budget B-movie horror films that its
director no doubt ingested in his childhood and adolescence. This
isn't so much evident in the storyline (which is better constructed and
better realised than that of most B-movies) as in its shamelessly tacky
special effects, particularly the animated sequences which mostly look
like something that has escaped from a cheap 1970s children's TV
show. The unconvincing, comicbook nature of the effects can only
add to the film's artisan charm, accentuating its deliciously surreal
edge and rendering it even more outlandishly funny.
Although he is barely on screen for ten minutes, Michael Keaton has not
the slightest difficulty stealing the film as the title character
Betelgeuse (also spelled Beetlejuice), the grossest ghost you can
imagine. You cannot conceive what the film would be like without
Keaton's hilarious and electrifying presence - it is entertaining
enough without him but it only really comes alive when Betelgeuse leaps
into action and starts wreaking mayhem and misery around him whilst
lecherously lurching at anything that takes his fancy. Sylvia
Sidney adds to the fun as the chain-smoking case worker Juno, whilst
Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis make an engaging lead couple failing to
come to grips with the traumas of being dead, ably assisted by a young
and winsome (in a Goth sort of way) Winona Ryder.
Beetlejuice is a surreal comic
delight, far wackier and less self-conscious than Tim Burton's
subsequent, slicker fantasy offerings. It is one of the most
enjoyable comedy horror films you will ever see, in this life and the
next...
© James Travers 2012
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Barbara and Adam Maitland are the owners of a large country house in
New England, which they plan to decorate during their summer
holidays. On their way home one day they drive their car off a
bridge into a river. The next thing they know is that they are
back in their home, where they soon realise that they must be
dead. When they try to leave the house, they find themselves in a
weird cartoon-like desert landscape inhabited by gigantic worms.
Having returned to the safety of their house, Barbara and Adam discover
that it has been sold and its new owners, the Deetze family, are in the
process of moving in. Alarmed at the Deetzes' plans to completely
renovate their beloved homestead, the ghost couple set about trying to scare them
away, but their attempts prove futile. Only the Deetzes' lonely
daughter Lydia can see them, and she becomes their friend.
Following the advice of a book entitled Handbook for the Recently
Deceased, Adam and Barbara draw a door on a wall and enter a strange
inter-life world inhabited by the newly dead. They meet their
case worker Juno, who insists that on no account must they call upon
the services of the freelance bio-exorcist Betelgeuse, a ghost with an
extremely malevolent and perverted personality. Realising they
have no other option, Adam and Barbara call upon the services of the
freelance bio-exorcist Betelgeuse, and soon wish they hadn't.
Lacking the Maitlands' self-restraint and good taste, Betelgeuse sets
out to frighten the Deetzes to death by whatever means he can.
Luckily Juno steps in before the psychopathic ghost can do any more
harm, and Adam and Barbara agree they can get along without him.
Far from being scared by these supernatural going on, the Deetzes see
an opportunity to get rich and decide to convert their house into a
ghost theme park...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.