There Goes The Neighborhood...

Rating: 9/10 (5 December 2008)

The Maitlands and The Dietzes: two families who have nothing in common except the house they both live in. So what's the twist? Well, actually...the Dietzes are a family you'd probably WANT to see dead. The Maitlands? They already are.
Barbara Maitland (Geena Davis) and her husband, Adam (Alec Baldwin), have just moved into a sweet little country house, when the unthinkable happens...thanks to a freak car accident, the whole line about "till Death do us part" has actually taken on a whole new meaning for them. But they've been parted from life, not from each other. And if you're thinking that death is all that different from the life they just left behind, think again. The Afterlife can be just as fraught with complications and peril, not the least of which finds the poor couple stranded in an 'alternative universe'-version of their house.
Enter the Dietzes. Pretentious, social-status fixated richies Charles (Jeffrey Jones) and Delia (Catherine O'Hara) and their Goth-obsessed daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder), who proceed to turn the Maitlands' quaint little cottage into an avant-garde nightmare that only Hieronymus Bosch - or Salvador Dali - could love.
What are two frustrated, spatially-stranded spooks to do? There's actually a sort of "Health and Haunted Services" system in the Great Beyond that provides assistance in the form of caseworkers (who are about as helpful in death as they are in life), and Adam and Barbara's "help" comes in the form of the cynical and cancerous Juno, (the great Sylvia Sidney), who goes completely by the book...but does tip the deceased darlings off to one dangerously unpredictable possibility for a resolution of their problem.
His name, as you know by now, is Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) - or as more commonly known - "Beetlejuice." He's a caseworker turned "independent contractor", which means he's bad news for the Maitlands, worse news for the Dietzes, and the best thing to happen to horror-comedies since three guys named Venkman, Spengler and Stanz. Say his name three times, and let the mirthful mayhem begin!
Audiences couldn't get enough of Tim Burton's uniquely twisted perspective on the world after his first major movie, PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE exploded onto movie screens, and no one knew what to expect for his follow-up. Good thing, too, because there was no way to anticipate or explain this screwy and satisfying story of ghosts being haunted by a living family more scary than they are, and the outrageous entity out to fleece them both for his own purposes, (not the least of which is to get a little cuddle time in with the languishingly lovely Lydia.)
How a literal army of writers managed to put together a script this good is beyond me, but after multiple viewings, this is still Number One for the title of Funniest Frightfest around.
Burton was laying the groundwork for his revolving company of players with BEETLEJUICE as well. Besides Jeffrey Jones as the nerd-alert of a husband, there's Glenn Shadix as the fey Otho, Delia's co-designer/co-conspirator in making over the Maitlands' house and the "exorcism" that follows, and Ryder, of course, in her breakout role which would be followed by her turn in HEATHERS, guaranteeing her status as the Eighties' "It " girl.
And besides the trademark hallucinogenic visuals and blackly funny sense of humor, there was that casting. Bringing Davis, Baldwin and the manic Keaton together was a masterstroke of both luck and genius, and who else could take Sylvia Sidney, Robert Goulet and DICK CAVETT, put them in the same movie and actually make them "cool?" It certainly wouldn't be the last time he would make that feat happen, but the timing and the end result would arguably never be more perfect.
BEETLEJUICE is a must-have for any movie library, whether you collect comedy OR horror. It can exist easily in both worlds...kind of like the Maitlands and the Dietzes.