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Beetlejuice
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How I viewed Michael Keaton before Batman.
And my first view of Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis and Winona Ryder.
I don’t think I’d seen Keaton in anything else, either, so as far as I was
concerned, he was a Robin Williams-style comic maniac, a feat that he pulled off
quite well. I have to say that every character and every scene in this movie amused me in
some way, many more than others, even the otherwise quite bland Maitlands.
But they’re supposed to be that way. They’re the only ones NOT able to understand the
Handbook of the Recently Deceased, a nice subtle running joke there. I suppose the
most depressing part of this film is the depiction of the afterlife, which resembles
the ultimate bureaucracy. There’s no indication that there’s anything but red tape waiting us
all, especially those who speed along their demise. As one character declares,
unknowingly with great accuracy, suicides become civil servants. Straining to figure out how the
various background characters met their ends is part of the fun here.
This is Tim Burton really honing his cinematic weirdness
to a fine point. The visuals throughout the movie are, to be cliched, SO him to anyone familiar
with his work. The asymmetrical architecture and eerie shadows, and even the costumes,
especially Beetlejuice’s black and white striped suit and comically gory “dead
guy” makeup. Burton even throws in some stop-motion animation, something
he almost single-handedly brought back into favor years later with A Nightmare Before
Christmas. But alas, CGI has been embraced too fully by modern special effects
companies.
I’ve found that I’m mostly alone in my opinion
that Winona Ryder had one part in her film career, and that was Lydia Dietz.
After that, she should not have been allowed to make any more.
Since I haven’t seen Heathers, as nay-sayers insist that I do, I can stick
firm to this belief. For a long time Lydia was my almost-hero. Not that I’m a Goth
chick - far from it - but so many of her lines were an angst-ridden hoot, such as in her overly
dramatic suicide note. “I … am alone…” (erase erase erase) “I… am UTTERLY… alone…”
And one of my mottos for life: “People ignore the strange and unusual. I myself AM…
strange and unusual.” My other is “Keep away from children,” but that’s another story.
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