Word: keaton
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...used to be that Saturday matinees offered dessert before dinner, a nifty Hollywood cartoon or three before the feature film. Daffy Duck would fume, but gracefully, through some dethpickable humiliation. Droopy dog would corral a wolf felon by employing the emotional minimalism of a Buster Keaton on Quaaludes. Maybe there'd be an early Disney cartoon for more refined preteen appetites. And then, on with the main attraction! The feature was often a broken-down B-minus monster movie, and pretty much an aesthetic anticlimax after the seven-minute masterpieces that opened the show. At the time, of course, nobody...
BEETLEJUICE. Is it the fey humor or the calypso tunes that have made this movie a monster hit? Most likely it is Michael Keaton's turbodrive performance as a haunt who is hot to party...
MICHAEL J. Fox comes to this role with the disadvantage of having already established himself as the glib Young Republican Alex Keaton, who's forever offering us the secret of his success. The yuppie image of Fox's earlier roles biased critics against him at the outset. On the other hand, it has given Fox plenty of ammunition to flex his thespian (although rather slight bodily) muscles just enough to give an extremely convincing performance that both Siskel and Ebert admired. And it is quite admirable. Jamie Conway is a truly desperate soul, quite close to dulling his own smug...
...unspeakable Delia (Catherine O'Hara). So the Maitlands have been trying to scare the Deetzes away. Sorry, kids. Go ahead and haunt these New Age parvenus; they'll just invite their friends to enjoy the kicky spectacle. The Maitlands need some serious help, perhaps from the lecherous demon (Michael Keaton) who pesters them with the slogan "Unhappy with Eternity? Call Betelgeuse." Beetlejuice...
...poignant points to make about, well, life: that the dead must teach the living to savor it. Mostly, though, he wants to give good fun, to turn Winter River into West Eastwick, to ransack pop culture for references to everything from Topper to Tiny Alice. And to give Michael Keaton the chance to run productively wild. Keaton's Beetlejuice is a deliciously loathsome creature, whether shouting insults, lunching on insects or, in the film's climactic wedding scene, pulling a ring off a severed, shriveled finger and muttering to his bride, "I tell ya, honey, she meant nuthin...