A bit of rose-tinted childhood nostalgia can evoke memories of when life felt less chaotic and the future was full of unlimited possibilities. I remember seeing Beetlejuice with my friend Mark during sixth grade. I remember it distinctly because it was the first movie I saw in a theater without an adult present. My mom dropped the two of us off before and picked the two of us after the movie. It would not be such a significant milestone today as it was then, as this was long before the Internet, let alone cell phones. We had to look up the movie times in the newspaper and guess at the movie’s runtime based on the start times of when your film would start and when the movie after yours would begin. If there was an emergency or a miscommunication, it involved going to a pay phone and calling your home’s landline, praying that someone home could answer. I hadn’t thought about that day in years. With the 2024 release of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, I decided to revisit this Tim Burton (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) classic. My recent rewatch of Beetlejuice in preparation for the sequel brought back that fond memory.

Adam (Alec Baldwin – Malice, The Cooler) and Barbara (Geena Davis – A League of Their Own, The Fly) are newlyweds living in a quaint little town in Winter River, Connecticut. They live in a cozy, three-story house with a beautiful yard that suits their needs. They have jobs that fulfill them and have mutual interests and activities in which they partake. They are a likable couple, one that we may have liked as leads in an entirely different movie just as much.

One day, while driving home from town, the couple crashes their car while trying to avoid a cat on a covered bridge overpass. The car submerges, and the scene ends. We then transition to Adam and Barbara back in their home, and life is seemingly as it was. However, Adam opens one of the outer house doors and falls off the steps into a fantasy world, where a sizeable sandworm off in the distance begins snaking towards him through a desert-type terrain. Barbara pulls him back after what feels like a few seconds to Adam but tells him he’s been gone for a few hours.

Adam and Barbara begin noticing other unusual things in the home. Their reflections don’t appear in the mirror. On their nightstand is a “handbook for the recently deceased.” They realize that they did not survive their car accident and are in some type of afterlife. Other than that, all seems normal. They are together. They look the same. They feel the same. However, they are unable to leave their home. As the pair read their handbook, they learn more about their situation. From there, we are taken deeper into Burton’s creative mind as we meet humorous and unusual characters in unique circumstances, piquing our interests and getting us more involved with the story.

Our conflict arises when a family moves into the vacated house after it was put up for sale. Though deceased, Adam and Barabara are perfectly content in their home and, while invisible to others, aren’t interested in strangers living in their space. The quirky Deitz family moving in includes Charles (Jeffrey Jones – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Howard the Duck), Delia (Catherine O’Hara – Home Alone, Waiting for Guffman), and their teenage daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder – Heathers, Girl, Interrupted).

Determined to rid the family from their home, Adam and Barbara enlist the help of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton – The Founder, Birdman), an unstable entity that appears in a miniature model version of the couple’s town that the couple has in their attic, to help scare the Deitzes to move away. Betelgeuse can be summed to real life by the same person saying Beatlejuice three times. While he can conjure fears, he can also sent back to the miniature version by saying his name again three times. The only way for him to escape the fantasy world is to marry someone from the real world. And Lydia could play that part for Betelgeuse. Shenanigans ensue through Burton’s use of special effects, distinctive sets, and offbeat props.

While Keaton appears on the screen for less than 20 minutes, he steals the show. Buried underneath a cake of makeup and prosthetics is one of the early characters that spurred his critically and commercially successful career, which includes films like Batman, The Paper, Birdman, Spotlight, Worth, and The Founder. Beetlejuice is his most creative and wild character. Tim Burton allowed him to cut loose, and that’s precisely what he did. There was an inherent chemistry between the entire cast. The film’s ebbs and flows occur naturally, resulting in a film that is both fun and entertaining. Similarly, Burton, with only Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and Frankenweenie in his filmography, used Beetlejuice as a catalyst to vault him into the ranks of Hollywood’s most unique movie directors.

I do wonder how I’d feel about seeing Beetlejuice for the first time as an adult. I appreciate Tim Burton movies, but his style isn’t usually for me, especially in later years. I did enjoy Batman (1989) and Edward Scissorhands (1990) quite a bit, though, like Beetlejuice, they haven’t held up as well as I had hoped. I enjoy them more for their nostalgia than for their substance. I’m curious how I’ll feel about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. While critics and audiences have received excellent reviews, it may have unrealistic expectations of what I hope it can be.

Plot 8/10
Character Development 8.5/10
Character Chemistry 9.25/10
Acting 8.25/10
Screenplay 8.75/10
Directing 9/10
Cinematography 9.5/10
Sound 8.5/10
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 9/10
88%

B

Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• The Addams Family
• Edward Scissorhands
• Practical Magic
• Alice in Wonderland