hen Barbara and Adam Maitland are killed in a car accident, they find themselves occupying their beloved home as ghosts. Invisible to the living, unable to travel outside the house and left with no guideposts except a long and inscrutable Manual for the Recently Deceased, they find their new
situation puzzling but ultimately bearable. They still have each other, after all, and for a time it seems as though their plans to renovate the house have barely been interrupted by their passing.
Unfortunately, the world of the living is not content to leave the two alone. When the house is sold to a family of noisy and well-off city-dwellers, the Maitlands are forced to retreat to the attic and watch as the entire place is gutted and redecorated. Barbara is drawn to the newcomers' young daughter, Lydia, but the ghosts can find no peace with their afterlife becoming a sort of post-modern hell around them. Scaring off the living inhabitants of the house seems the obvious thing to do, but Barbara and Adam are simply too nice to be terrifying. Making their presence known only encourages the new homeowners to try to find the dead couple—and to exploit them commercially.
Finding no assistance in their ever-confusing manual, Barbara and Adam turn to a private bio-exorcist, a ghost who guarantees he can drive the living out of any house. The only problem? The cure Beetlejuice offers might be more destructive than the disease!
An artful blend of comedy and dark fantasy
Directed by Tim Burton in 1988, Beetlejuice fully exploits its two greatest strengths: its cast and its script. Michael Keaton in the title role absolutely chews the scenery, delivering an over-the-top performance that is only enhanced by the down-to-earth portrayals of Adam and Barbara. Winona Ryder is at her charming, youthful best and Catherine O'Hara is especially delightful as the spoiled sculptor who wants to make the Maitland home over in her image. Such strong actors might still have been wasted in a weaker tale, but Beetlejuice features crackling dialogue and a story
that is both zany and entirely logical.
Ghost stories played for laughs are hard to pull off. The macabre themes surrounding death often lend themselves to a heavy-handedness that brings down the comedy. Beetlejuice approaches its subject matter by making, of death, another form of life. The Maitlands still have very day-to-day
problems—getting along with the neighbors, wishing for a child, struggling with faceless bureaucracies. Their freedom has been narrowed, but they are largely unchanged.
This is not to say that the movie entirely skirts the topic of death. Disease, suicide and decay are laced throughout the story, and Barbara and Adam come to learn that there are worse fates than having to haunt—or share—a home. Some of the jokes in this film are very morbid indeed, offering moments of depth amid the general chaos of a Keaton-runs-amok vehicle. Ultimately, the Maitlands' relationship with Lydia plays out in a way that is both entertaining and life-affirming. Beetlejuice jokes about death, in other words, without pretending that it isn't a serious matter indeed.
