Indoor Outhouse

Rating: 9/10 (9 November 2015)

Hyperbolic as it may sound, there has never quite been another film like Beetlejuice. Vomited from the maniacal mind of Tim Burton, before his name became tantamount to an adjective, the film is such a flurry of paradoxes that it really shouldn't work. But work it does, not so much bending genres as warping and distorting them like the monstrous pantomime faces scrunched by its ghostly protagonists – a ghoulishly zany live action cartoon filled with wonderful weirdness, and an unequivocal 80s classic.
Only Burton could transmogrify the horror of life after death into a rambunctiously mischievous fairy tale, but the snarkily cheerful Leave it to Beaver New England introduction proves a perfect setup to the ensuing punchline of the afterlife. Naturally, in the hands of dear Tim, the true horror of death lies not in the exquisitely realized, gruesomely surreal Dune-like wasteland of horrific stop motion leviathans, but in purgatory ultimately functioning as a garish, never-ending bureaucratic waiting room, with drawling receptionists thumbing copies of pedantic instruction manuals. The horror the horror!
Indeed, for all its zaniness and Tex Avery-style slapstick, Beetlejuice is a film brimming with surprising heart and cleverness. Burton has always been at his pitch-black, satirical best ripping apart ideologies of 'normal life', and he has a ball equally taking jabs at our goodhearted ghostly protagonists (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, both charmingly flustered), who are tickled pink by the prospect of a 'staycation' cooped up refurbishing their home, or the house's posthumous inhabitants (the deliciously demented Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O'Hara), who tastelessly claw at postmodern décor or oafishly Machiavellian capitalism, goaded on by their preening design consultant Otho (the note-perfect Glen Shadix). By contrast, it's pretty easy to sympathize with their goth daughter (Winona Ryder at her surly, adorable best), who cheerfully pens suicide notes beginning with "I am *utterly* alone" before it was cool.
This all goes without mentioning the film's star attraction: Michael Keaton, as the titular sh*t- disturbing Bio-Exorcist. Keaton's career-defining performance is truly on another level of comedic genius, as he roars through the film like a Tasmanian devil Rumplestiltskin, riffing, swearing, crotch-honking, and guzzling scenery like the demonic snake he eventually transforms into. It's a tantamount to Keaton's wacky, manic charisma that he's barely in his own movie, and yet provides one of the most unforgettable filmic characters of all time from essentially an extended cameo.
And yet, the film's most bizarrely impressive accolade is, in spite of this cauldron of seething, seemingly antithetical weirdness, Burton has managed to stir up a strangely, unprecedentedly feel-good film. Somehow, in its mad tornado of satire, gorgeously oddball visuals, and adventurously eccentric performances, seasoned with Danny Elfman at his infectiously bouncy best, and sprinkled with a couple of Harry Belafonte Calypso dance numbers for good measure (naturally), Burton's Gothic ode to the afterlife couldn't surge with more life and vibrancy. Beautifully grotesque and morbidly heartfelt, for audiences familiar or inexperienced, it's unquestionably worth reciting the name three times, and uncorking the spectacular insanity of Beetlejuice.
(It's show time!)
-9.5/10