So let me see… from 1988 to 1992, what was happening? Hmm. I was getting married after moving halfway across the country in a rented car, moving to Edinburgh with no money, and working on a doctorate. I guess I was pretty busy. I missed Beetlejuice in 1988 and confused it in my head with Death Becomes Her (1992), which I may or may not have seen. Some time ago I felt that I really should watch the former, not because of the sequel. I may have seen bits of it over the years, but I wasn’t impressed with what I remembered. Maybe part of the draw—the movie did quite well when released—is how different it was then from many things that came after. Now that I’ve finally watched it, I can see it has some charms but I felt rather like the critics who noted the Betelgeuse subplot seems dissociated from the rest of the movie.
Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice is fun to watch, no doubt. He doesn’t have much screen time, though. His backstory, which seems important to explaining why he is how he is, feels shortchanged. It also doesn’t really explain why the other characters dislike him so much. When he’s released to save the Maitlands, he does, yet all they want to do is banish him. I know better than to look for a coherent set of character motivations in such a movie, but for all the fronting of Beetlejuice, the story is really the Maitlands coming to grips with being dead and having other people move into their house. The Others, while straightforward horror, handles this dynamic a bit better. Of course, Beetlejuice is a Tim Burton movie, and that comes with a certain inherent quirkiness.
I had a mixed reaction, it’s fair to say. Part of the problem may be that I’ve seen some of Burton’s better work, which came after Beetlejuice, before seeing the movie. And other movies have done quite well in the weird category (Parasite, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Poor Things), making Beetlejuice feel its age. Or maybe it’s all the build-up to Betelgeuse and then giving him so little time for his antics. Perhaps it was the title of the film, or its confusion in my brain with another dark fantasy comedy, but it just didn’t press all my buttons. Seeing it in the context of its Zeitgeist may have helped, but I was rather busy then and that part hasn’t really changed since.