Am I missing something? Because . . .

Rating: 6/10 (9 April 2009)

Beetlejuice is one of those films you feel guilty about not liking more. Sounds daft, I know, but it's a bit like not liking as much an aunt everyone else insists is a real sweetie, but with the best will in the world you just can't see it. I mean, Beetlejuice is by Tim Burton, right, and an early masterpiece, right; and Michael Keaton in the title role, delivers a barnstorming performance, right; and it's full of examples of Tim Burton's celebrated off-the-wall, wacky humour right, with loads of imaginative special effects, right. And anyway, everyone, and I mean everyone thinks it's really, really good and really, really cool and just, you know, brilliant, I mean really, really brilliant, right. So if you disagree and, you know, you don't get it, it's your problem, man, because everyone else thinks it's really, really cool and really, really brilliant. But unfortunately I don't think it is really, really good and really, really brilliant. The real problem is that I don't think I even have a problem — I just don't think Beetlejuice is quite as good as everyone, and I mean, everyone, right, says. It's rather like Robert De Niro's performance in Mean Streets: everyone says it's pure genius, then you see it, and you think: aren't they exaggerating just a little, I mean, just a little? It's good, yes, but . . . Beetlejuice is this film I had heard so much about, which was truly original and with which Tim Burton first made his name (or something). But I had never seen it because somehow I didn't when it first came out, and then it was never in a cinema near me or else when it was shown on TV, I didn't get to hear about it until it was too late. But I also made a mental note that I simply must see it and when I found that one of our local supermarkets was selling a copy for £4, which is my sort of price, in it went into the shopping basket. In the event, I didn't get to slip it into my DVD player (i.e. my iBook) until a few weeks later, but when I did, I couldn't get rid of the niggling suspicion that I was in for something of a disappointment. Now, it would be pointless to go into chapter and verse pointing out a flaw here and a flaw there, because, quite truthfully Tim Burton does have a rather extraordinary imagination and in many respects Beetlejuice is streets ahead of the competition. You might even say that Burton re-wrote the rules for making films in a certain kind of genre, although I would be hard-pushed to give that genre a name. But let me give just one example: the Maitland's are in so many ways such caricatures that you assume such characterisation will be part of the plot. But it isn't. Then we are presented with the Deetz family and their camp interior designer and again the characterisation is so broadbrush that you wonder just at what level the whole thing is being pitched. Well, actually, it doesn't matter. This is cartoon stuff, except that it doesn't feature animation but acting. OK, fair enough. Then we get to Keaton giving an undoubted tour de force but in an odd sort of way it never really takes off. We are informed that at one point he was someone's assistant but his behaviour became so extreme that he had to be let go. Well, perhaps I'm being a little over-pernickety here, but I want some sort of back story which would help flesh out Beetlejuice. But all we are led to believe is that he should, on no account, be invoked. Naturally, he is invoked, but oddly the film finishes quite soon afterwards (in an ending which involved a deus ex machina of such obviousness that I would bet my shirt the writer simply did not know how to end his story. In fact, apart from the fact that one could dies and wants to scare another couple out of their home, what was the story. When the film came, I was even taken by surprise: was that it? I thought, for although by now Beetlejuice had already been running for 90 minutes odd, in a sense it was only just getting going. But no, that was it, like it or lump it. Perhaps, I am expecting too much. Perhaps I am being too serious. Perhaps I should just relax and get into the spirit of the film (and no silly pun intended there). The trouble is that Beetlejuice could have been so much more. We often say that so-and-so was more than just the sum of its parts, and hope to indicate that it included an x factor which raised it above the rest. Well, for me Beetlejuice is, in a sense, less the sum of its parts. It seemingly has everything, but . . . Oh well, I'll just have to firm a sub-group of those who don't think this is the best thing since sliced bread.