I lament the loss of the 90 minute comedy. Back in the day, most comedic films were around 90 minutes long to keep the scenes tight and the budgets low. These days, most movies breeze past the 120 minute mark without a pause - even comedies!
I mention that because Beetlejuice is a sparse 92 minutes in length. In that short time, so many great story ideas and visuals are presented that I’m sure modern directors would adopt the more is more approach were they making the film today. We’ll see when Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is released later this year. But back in 1988, this lean comedy really fired on all cylinders. Surprisingly, Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice character was restricted to just a bit more than 17 minutes of that run time. His bravura performance was used as the spice, just as it should have been.
Restraint isn’t a word I’d have thought I’d ever applied to Beetlejuice, but it comes to mind when I consider just how amazing the screenplay is. Moments speed by, prompting rewatch after rewatch to absorb the details. Those details aren’t really important, but they help to make Beetlejuice into much more than the sum of its parts.
While it’s clear that the Maitlands are the main protagonists here, the antagonists are much harder to pin down. It’s a shifting sea of characters, all of whom work both for and against the Maitlands as they try and negotiate the afterlife. In the end, the only real antagonist is Beetlejuice himself, but it doesn’t take much of a squint to see him as the protagonist in his own tale. He is the title character, after all.
Tim Burton has always sucked as a film director. His best films are the one where he hardly directs at all (see Ed Wood). However, he’s an amazing scenographer. It really took a leader with an affinity for the gothic, a talent for design, and the ability to sit back and let the cast take charge in order to make this movie work. His direction here is sound because the script really doesn’t require a lot of intricate camera work or articulate shots. It’s much better if the film is shot like a traditional comedy so we can enjoy the performances without getting distracted by too much meddling from the director.
And what performances they are. There’s not a single weak link in this cast. Every single actor holds their own in every scene, and that’s no simple feat when you have Michael Keaton milking every shot like his life depends on getting laughs from the crew. I’d list the other standouts but there are none - they all standout in their roles. Sadly, there’s a pall cast on the production by the sexual misconduct of Jeffrey Jones (Charles Deetz) later in his life, but that doesn’t change the fact that his performance here is top shelf.
I should also mention Danny Elfman’s music. It’s the perfect set of sounds for this film despite the fact that he reprises his trademark bouncy motifs from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. His addition of the violin-played theme for the character of Beetlejuice really helps to root the character in the distant past while some gently magical melodies expound on the wonders experienced by Lydia and the Maitlands.
Beetlejuice is one of Burton’s best films, alongside the aforementioned Ed Wood and Edward Scissorhands. In it, he played to his strengths with the help of an amazing cast and crew. Highly recommended.
