Beetlejuice



“Barb, honey... we're dead. I don't think we have very much to worry about anymore.”

            I can remember watching Beetlejuice all the time when I was little. This is one of my childhood movies. I just recently bought this on DVD and I seriously do not know what took me so long to get it. Watching Beetlejuice again after such a long time it felt like I had just watched it yesterday I remembered all the scenes.

            Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) are a young couple. They live in a very rural area of the Northeast in a house they have lovingly decorated and made their own. When the movie starts they are finally on vacation from work and planning to spend the week in their home working on things and relaxing. Adam wants to run out and Barbara goes with him. On the way home their vacation becomes a prolonged one when their car crashes in to the local river. Next thing they know they are wet and back in their house with no memory of how they got there.

            When they look into a mirror they realize they are dead they drowned when their car went into the river. They are given a guide book on how to live in the afterlife but the book is really confusing. They take a travel to the other side and are told by their advisor Juno (Sylvia Sidney) in order to stay in their house forever they must scare the yuppie hipster New Yorkers that have just moved in. Adam and Barbara have no idea how to scare these people they try the whole sheet thing but that totally backfires. The only person in the family who can really see them in human form is the morbid daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder).

        The couple really does not know how to get these people to leave. There is however this one strange ghoul they have been hearing about named Beetlejuice. To talk to Beetlejuice they have to say his name three times. When Adam and Barbara come face to face with the “bio-exorcist” he is nothing but a disgusting menace.

            Ever since Lydia took the pictures of Adam and Barbara in the sheets her parents have and their friends have been nagging for her to show them the ghost to make them come out. One of their friends reads from the recently deceased book along with other paranormal readings and he gets Barbara and Adam to appear in their human form. Their human forms start to disintegrate. Lydia in desperation runs to Beetlejuice for help to save them. He does but then the troublemaker is sent on his way back to the other side.

            Good God where to even begin on why I love this movie so much. I am such a loser but I actually started tearing up in happiness over seeing the ending when “Jump in the Line” comes on because I remember loving it so much as a kid.

            Watching it now I love the cast. Geen Davis is one of my favorite actresses she was so adorable as Barbara. Alec Baldwin for as much as he is an asshole now he is a good actor and I cannot even believe how handsome he once was (I am so used to seeing him as Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock that it is weird to not see him as a fat man with a really low voice). Catharine O’Hara was such a bitch in this movie but I love her she could really do no wrong in whatever she is in. Winona Ryder was good this was before she went really weird. Michael Keaton amazes me I mean anyone who can pull of this role then do all kinds of serious movies is a very good actor in my book. I never knew who Sylvia Sidney was and I only just noticed her name. It is odd to think she was a classic actress who made films with actors like Cary Grant and James Cagney. I guess in a way I have always loved the cast even when I was little and I just never knew it.

            Tim Burton is a genius. The way his mind works is kind of scary and unusual but that is what makes him so different and stand out from other directors. The world he creates and captures is what really makes Beetlejuice awesome.

        Best scenes of the whole movie:



No explanations are needed they are just awesome. They’re two of my all time favorite scenes from the movies.

            If you have a good sense of humor you will enjoy Beetlejuice if you have been living under a rock for the past twenty-three years and have not seen it. The best thing about the DVD- there are three episodes from the Beetlejuice cartoon in the extras!! Now how many of you remember that cartoon?