Newspaper Page Text
Tim Burton's Beetlejuice is a farce that's
blessedly lunatic. It comes as a reprieve from the
whirling disorder lately so characteristic of our
nightly television newscasts. The film's particular
balm lies in its own sneaky subversiveness. As a
director, Burton is a gagster-artist who goes reality a
quantum-leap further. He creates characters and
images so depraved that they take on a hallucinatory
otherworidliness all their own.
The plot centers on a
delicately eccentric young
couple, Barbara (Geena Davis,
enchanting) and her husband
Adam (Alec Baldwin,
appealingly self-absorbed),
who are being lobbied hard by
a local realtor to sell their
beloved house, a merry slip of
architectural good sense. The
realtor can get them hundreds
of thousands for the house, but
their fondest hope lies
elsewhere: they wish to have
a child, a feat for which
they've so far had no luck. But
even childless you sense
they11 get on. There's
unmistakable sweetness in the
way the film handles this
carries when performing without a net The dog
cooly takes in the scene, then loses interest and
blithely steps off the plank, plunging the couple into
the water, where they awaken in the next world to
considerable confusion.
Transformed into ghosts, Adam and Barbara are
sent back to their much sought-after home where
they must stand by and watch the panged but
inhabitants crazy until they move.
They wait till the Deetz's give a socially
important dinner party, which they sabotage by
possessing the cooler-than-thou guests. Gathered
round the dinner table, everyone suddenly begins to
sing and dance to the calypso song Day-0 in a spirit
to make even the most musically confident West
Indian gaze with envy.
JEFFERY JONES as Charles Deetz; CATHERINE O’HARA as Delia Deetz; GLENN SHADIX as Otho and WINONA RYDER as Lydia
Deetz, star in "Beetlejuice," a stylish new comedy with a supernatural twist Photo ©1988 the Geffen Film Company (All Rights Reserved)
in a strectcomcr pimp's $500 Armani slacks. It turns
out to be no surprise that he believes himself
debonair and is lechcrously after the Deetz's
sympathetic daughter.
Beetlejuice is a comedy whose parts hang in
glittering disarray. Burton probably has a finer
sense of structure than we can guess at in this film,
because he only partly succeeds in piecing together
the MENSA-like puzzle of
sequences. He
unquestionably knows
how to get the very best
possible out of his actors,
who bring the
eccentricities of their
characters to full bloom
Even in his interiors
Burton shows a keen eye
for composition, and his
darkling imagination is a
breeding ground for the
witty grotesque. He also
has the nerve distinctive to
artists: he dares to plumb
his imagination to its
lowest depths,
subject. It's no more than a tacit
glance between them, a silence that registers the fine
rapport of their minds.
Driving home from town after buying some
supplies, the couple nearly runs down a stray dog
beneath a covered bridge, leaving their car dangling
perilously off the road above water. Their fate lies
with the dog, who stands idly on a wooden plank
that steadies them like the pole a tightrope artist
zealous realtor finally fulfill her dream: the sale of
their house at an immense profit to a neurotically
upscale family from New York called the Deetz's,
Delia (Catherine O'Hara), Charles (Jeffrey Jones),
and their black-veiled daughter Lydia (Winona
Ryder). Stunned into action by Delia and her
dismissive decorator chum's plans for redecorating
the house-examples of investment art sensibilities
run trendily amok-they plot to haunt the new
But the Deetz’s and their guests are delighted.
Adam and Barbara are left with no choice but their
dreaded last resort They hire a hipster spirit called
Beetlejuice who talks like the sort of used-car con
who'd sell his grandmother if he could get away
with it Played with titan energy and aplomb by
Michael Keaton, Beetlejuice is one of the most
repulsively alluring creations I can recall in film, a
sly hustler whose talk jangles like the loose-change
determined either to get
his feet stuck in the
mud or smash his fist
through the water's
surface, flinging jewels that spark in the sunlight In
Beetlejuice, a lot of those jewels turn out to be set in
paste, but much of the satire is diamond shape, and
Burton's creations have a boldness and humor like
nobody else's. This loused-up piece of
moviemaking is an authentic work of eccentric
American art
- Terry Francis
Betelgeuse a.k.a. f Beetlejuice*: All That Glitters Is Not Ghostly
p'
Returning By Popular Demand In A Special Benefit Performance...
A MUSICAL ABOUT BEING
8 PM, Thursday And Friday Evening, April 28-29
Peachtree Playhouse. Tickets $15. Resermons: 827-9678
All Proceeds From This Presentation of Different Will Go To Benefit The Names Project/ Atlanta and SAME, The