Beetlejuice
I have quite a bit to say on this one. This is one goofy movie. I really liked the tone - lighthearted toying with dark subject matter. Some of the imagery was great. I was particularly bemused with the ‘flat man’ on the hanger and him zipping into a wall.
It was also very funny in places too. Jeffrey Jones is just hilarious. All those little silly scenes with him minding his own business are fantastic. Likewise, Catherine O’Hara was great! Really underrated performances - everyone goes on about Michael Keaton in this film but those two surpassed him. The dance scene, which would be trash on paper, was also legitimately funny because of those actors. Really good.
The film itself feels a bit choppy, like we are only seeing perhaps 2/3 of what they actually filmed. Not a plot heavy film but many plot elements are not really explained at all and you have to make a bit of a leap to explain them.... or just shrug and go ‘ah what the heck I do not need to understand this’. I was somewhat confused with how BJ got stuck in the model village and what the consequences were of his escape... and also why the two ghosts were mysteriously re-dying at the end (wiki suggests that an exorcism was unwittingly performed which makes sense but yeah, not obvious at all from what’s actually on screen)!!
The other thing that really struck me was that there is barely any Beetlejuice in the film. At all!! Like, maybe 15 -20 minutes out of a 90 minute film. Sort of surprised me. Doesn’t really matter, it just wasn’t what I expected.
All in all, definitely worth a watch if you like things that are spooky and want something that will bemuse you. Just anticipate that it will be a little junky and assume that there is barely any Beetlejuice!
8/10
