Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Revisiting Old Haunts

or

"I Dont Think That I Can Take It/

'Cause It Took SO LONG to Bake It/

And I'll Never Have That Recipe Agaaaaain"
 

Beetlejuice was an unlikely hit when it debuted away back in 1988. Director Tim Burton was virtually unknown. He'd made two shorts, one called Vincent and the other, his live-action version of Frankenweenie, the second of which convinced Paul Reubens to give him the directing job on Pee-wee's Big Adventure. That one had made money and when Burton became friends with writers Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson after directing their modern re-telling of "The Jar" for the television anthology re-boot "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", they began collaborating on McDowell and Wilson's original screenplay "Beetlejuice". As closely identified as he is with the film, it did not start as an original idea—Burton had already been working on his next film, Batman with writer Sam Hamm, but the project hadn't gotten out of the Warner Brothers' development Hell, when the McDowell-Wilson script found its way to him.

 

Beetlejuice changed everything. Burton's bizarre approach to the material garnered a large audience, and seeing the success that the young director had made of such a strange concept, Warner was more than happy to finance Batman. And Tim Burton became, if not a household name, a guarantor of original concepts and oddly-tilted projects that audiences fancied.

A sequel to Beetlejuice has always been talked about...but Burton has always been busy. For the longest time, it had been going through a series of concepts from many Burton collaborators under such titles as "Beetlejuice Goes to Hell," "Beetlejuice in Love" and..."Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian" (I think that might have been a joke-title for the press) but Burton always seemed to find something that attracted him more. Now, a whopping 36 years—and several Batmen—later, it's finally manifested itself in theaters.

A bit of personal back-story here: I must confess that the first Beetlejuice movie...at first viewing...I wasn't that crazy about. Brilliantly designed, yes. Ingenious and funny, sure. Keaton, terrific...if used a bit sparingly. All the elements were there, but it just seemed a bit wanting. Some of it might be attributed to Alec Baldwin's performance—this was before he became "Alec Baldwin"—which was a little bland, almost protective of himself as an actor. But, the big thing is I got the impression that the movie wasn't exactly true to its own rules...like if something needed to be resolved, Burton would just come up with something and excuse it as "it'll work" rather than making sense. This was before I started to appreciate Burton as Burton.* With a couple more films, I learned to let Burton be Burton and my reservations blew away like dust that obscures a snow-globe. Oh, he could still do a less than satisfying film, but a fully-engaged Burton film is a joy to behold...and experience.

Which is why I found Beetlejuice Beetlejuice such a breath of fresh air, albeit with a creepily crypt-like funk. One recalls that when Burton does a sequel—he's only done one, Batman Returns, far different in tone than the first one—he approaches it the same way he does one of his re-makes...as a "re-imagining." Yes, there will be call-backs (and there are plenty in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), but, for the most part, Burton is vampire-staking new ground, and here he's doing it with such wild abandon that one turns giddy with each new development...however grisly or grotesque.

 
The story has three arcs that will progress and come together at the end.

1) It's 36 years later than the events of the first film and Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), the girl who could "see dead people," is the host of a cable-TV show called "Ghost House" where she visits haunted places. She has the experience. She is currently having the experience of seeing flashing visions of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton)—well, he isn't "flashing" per se, but one wouldn't put it past him—which is making her more neurotic than normal and has her reaching for her anti-anxiety pills, much against the wishes of her producer/boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux). Lydia is a mess, anyway. Her surrogate ghost-family, the Maitlands have "found a loophole" and moved on. Her husband, Richard (Santiago Cabrera) has disappeared exploring the Amazon, and her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), in boarding school, hates her, blaming her for driving her father away and because she considers her mother's work with the supernatural "a sham." Lydia's mother Delia (Catherine O'Hara) is now a popular artist with a gallery opening pending, when she learns that husband Charles () has died and she insists that the three generations of women return to their old home in Winter River for a proper memorial.

2) Betelgeuse is now a functionary in Afterlife Management, running a boiler-room of shrunken-head employees and still holding a torch for Lydia, when he is called off the job by "ghost detective" Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), B-movie action star in his past life, who warns him that his past wife Delores (Monica Bellucci), a soul-sucking witch who murdered him during the Black Plague has somehow managed to reassemble herself—Betelgeuse hacked her into parts after discovering she'd poisoned him (it was the Plague Years, after all)—and is now seeking him out for revenge. Betelgeuse knows he won't out-run her for long and knows his only real salvation is to try to get back into the mortal world.

3) Astrid, on break from her boarding school (which she hates) and with her Mother (whom she hates) and step-grandmother (whom she tolerates) and her Mother's boyfriend (whom she despises), does just enough family-duty to go through with Charles' service, but then lights out on her bicycle where, by accident, she meets Jeremy (Arthur Conti), who feels like as much of an outcast as she does. They plan to meet up for Hallowe'en. Jeremy is the first decent boy she's met...but then, she hasn't had much experience with boys. If she wasn't keeping it a secret her mother or grandmother might tell her that boys are only after one thing...

That's a lot of story, and there are a lot of characters, and a lot of detail and the movie sails by with hardly a bump. In the meantime, Burton is having fun mixing things up with stop-motion animation (the sequence is ingenious on so many levels), or by telling the story of Betelgeuse and Delores' relationship in the style of a Mario Bava giallo film, in black and white and with Italian narration, and his parade of recently deceaseds all visually communicate how they died, usually in ways that would make them win Darwin Awards.

One of those awards would surely be deserving of someone who kept rambling on and on talking about how they loved everything about the movie and proceeded to tell you everything they loved about the movie and spoiling it. Those were just a couple of things that made me grin and grimace throughout the movie and there's so much more that should be left unsaid for full appreciation. But, leave it to say that Burton is working on all cylinders and with at least the same amount of joy he did with the first film...nearly four decades ago.

This time, I had no quibbles, from the first sequence to the last, each with their in-jokes and sense of the macabre to their giddy reveling in kitsch—a key component to understanding most of Tim Burton's work—all topped off with another happily galumphing Danny Elfman score. If I could grin any more, the top of my head would have rolled back like a PEZ dispenser. 

 

And laugh?  I thought I'd die.

* I had a REAL problem with Edward Scissorhands when the titular character stabbed his arch-nemesis to death, destroying the innocence of the character. The thing is...that was kind of the point. The "real world" of suburbia finally broke him, and it's why he HAS to go back to The Inventor's castle in self-exile. In practical terms, the death is unresolved—the police should be showing up at the castle-door (maybe with torches and pitch-forks), but—in story-terms, Edward's already punishing himself...in his own prison.

 

Burton tells stories with dream-logic. Real-world issues do not apply.

Your Highness

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day. And I remember this one distinctly because it's one of those comedies that didn't make me laugh much, but, instead, only filled with me a great resentment for whatever hack studio executive green-lit this mess. I'm usually charitable to movies because they are the work and coordination of many people and only some can achieve some sort of magic greatness. But, I can't even be charitable about this one. This crap-fest was a waste of everyone's time...but evidently not their talent.

Written at the time of the film's regrettable release.

 

"Du-uh..."

 or   

"Natalie Portman's Post-Oscar Slump, Part 1"

I've needed a laugh lately. I've been second-and third-guessing myself, not sure which way to go on all sorts of matters. And after seeing two movies, good and bad, in which anyone can be tread upon by the Government (The Conspirator and this Saturday's "Take Out the Trash" entry*), I needed something light, something frothy, something not Hanna or The Lincoln Lawyer.

 

I needed a comedy, dammit! After playing pin-ball in my head for a week and a half, I wanted a new thought to tilt me out of my doldrums. It would be appropriate, too, as every scene we've looked at Sundays of this April Fools Month has been a comedy (this week will be no exception), so a comedy might be just the thing to kick my torpor in the ass, or at least make it slip on a banana peel. 

 

Wish I'd found one, because this isn't it.

Your Highness, in fact, makes me wish I was living in a different era—not the one depicted in the film, of course, but also not in a time when such a movie, with big stars (every Briton who isn't in the "Harry Potter" series, like Charles Dance and Damian Lewis), sumptuous locales and elaborate costuming can be so sloppily put-together that one gets the impression that at every stage the film-makers said "Eh...good enough" and moved on. 

I noticed myself laughing exactly twice, and longing for something—anything—to be half-way clever or even half-way executed.* I like my comedy to have a brain in its head, and something to say besides what could shock your grandmother. Despite the cast, this one has so little going for it, you start to worry that at least the cast were well compensated. Because it couldn't have been for love.

I'm a fan of James Franco, Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel, but why they should play second-fiddle to Danny McBride (who's usually lousy...Land of the Lost...and who barely registered as the reluctant groom in Up in the Air) is beyond me. Sure, Franco probably owes director David Gordon Green for his role in Pineapple Express (which I haven't seen, but have heard good things about), but he seems a bit lost in this, although gamely appearing cluelessly cheery throughout.

Borrowing heavily from every fantasy-adventure movie from the last 20 years (and liberally from Star Wars—their take on Yoda is particularly nasty, and they have a clockwork bird-familiar after the original Clash of the Titans), Highness tells the story of the sons of King Tallious (Dance) and his two sons—the heir to the throne, Fabious (Franco), and the ne'er-do-well younger Thadeous (McBride) who would appear to be "Your Lowness." Fabious' bride Belladonna (Deschanel) is kidnapped by the evil sorcerer Leezar (Justin Theroux, who co-wrote Tropic Thunder, another high-concept low-result comedy) for his own nefarious plans. Fabious recruits Thadeous to go on the search for Lezar, despite the fact that the younger Prince can't fight, doesn't travel well, and is in all things incompetent. Plus, he's the "troop griper/whiner." Good planning. Dick jokes ensue.

Between the puerile humor there are some action sequences, but Green has a hard time deciding whether he's playing them for laughs or for jolts. Not that it matters, as they succeed in neither, not even in the way that competent directors can achieve both or even one. And, although things are accomplished, nobody really learns anything so character arcs are as flat as a crushed pixie (the only clever idea I saw in the whole thing).

But, one thing Your Highness did accomplish: I had no second thoughts about it.

Maybe Hanna would have had more laughs.***

"I just won an an Oscar. You want me to what?"

* A complete execution...of me...was what I wanted after seeing this movie!  One thing that is mentioned in all the write-ups I've seen is that the crew went into production with  only a story and everything was ad-libbed on-set.  Really, they shouldn't be boasting about that. Oh...and the film I hinted at for the Saturday "Take Out the Trash" candidate that week was the latest version of Atlas Shrugged (Part 1).

 ** Okay, okay. I dump on Danny McBride—or Danny R. McBride, as he's calling himself these days—a lot. Because I don't see the talent. I don't find him funny, and mostly find him a little desperate. But...he was okay in Up in the Air. And he was superb in Alien: Covenant. When the man is firing on all thrusters—as he had to do in the "Alien" movie—he can be really good. (Here's what I wrote about him then—"I have to confess: while one shouldn't walk into movies with prior expectations, I was really looking forward to a scene where Danny McBride gets offed by one of the xenomorphs—I rarely have seen McBride in anything where I found him with an ounce of talent or charm, he's one of those few actors I actively don't like. But, here, he's terrific, taking an under-written part and bringing a lot of good choices and subtle nuances to the role. I'm now a fan.")

*** It didn't.

American Psycho

American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000) 

[Bateman] was crazy the same way [I was]. He did not come out of me sitting down and wanting to write a grand sweeping indictment of yuppie culture. It initiated because of my own isolation and alienation at a point in my life. I was living like Patrick Bateman. I was slipping into a consumerist kind of void that was supposed to give me confidence and make me feel good about myself but just made me feel worse and worse and worse about myself. That is where the tension of American Psycho came from. It wasn't that I was going to make up this serial killer on Wall Street. High concept. Fantastic. It came from a much more personal place, and that's something that I've only been admitting in the last year or so. I was so on the defensive because of the reaction to that book that I wasn't able to talk about it on that level.

Bret Easton Ellis' controversial 1991 novel "American Psycho" received damning reviews and protests, even boycotts. It's depictions of violence against women— and violence against anybody—was condemned left, right and center, while its look at toxic masculinity, and toxic consumerism was pretty much dismissed as trying to apply a sociological band-aid for what was essentially slasher-porn. The violence in the book buried any consideration of what the book might be saying about a personality so self-involved that it surpassed pathology. 

But, why should this be surprising? Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" and Stanley Kubrick's film of it are more talked about for its violent aspects and cruelty rather than the very real—and extreme—considerations about free will and attempts to dampen it, even if for the greater good. The message gets lost in the illustration of the worst case scenario.

The thing is Patrick Bateman, Ellis' "Psycho" protagonist (played by Christian Bale in the film version by Mary Harron), is a misanthrope, much like that other "Psycho," Norman Bates—it's just he's better dressed, more stylish, has a better job, and is on an upward track to being what is considered successful in America. Sure, the surface-flash may be attractive...to some...but the festering pit of soullessness and heartlessness that serve as competitive spirit in his career as an investment banker is only somewhat more lethal than the motivations of Jordan Belfort, Leonardo DeCaprio's character in Wolf of Wall Street—sociopath or psychopath, they're just two paths to getting what you want, without regard to others, and the destruction, seen or unseen, left in the wake of success.

At about the same time as Ellis' novel, there was another, Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club," that also examined the American path to success where the protagonist's hollow consumerism started to so weigh on him that he started beating himself up over it and, when that movie was made in 1999, nobody missed the point...even when it led him to an act of terrorism that resembled the 9/11 attacks two years later. Everybody cherry-picks when they have a point to prove. "Fight Club" was also seen by some as a model for males to return to a form of rugged primacy to avoid consumerist emasculation. And yet he doesn't live in a cave, but a luxury condo, and not independent in any form. One can see this in AP's use of extreme grooming and high-fashion one-upmanship. The guy gets upset when someone has a better designed calling card than he does. He merely wants to win by any means necessary.

Now, I'm not going to get political here (as I was when I first started writing this thing LAST Hallowe'en season), but one can see where this is going. Let's just say I've always rejected the sentiment that "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing"—attributed to Vince Lombardi (who would hedge on it), but actually coined by Red Sanders (I guess "winning" depends on your press agent). You can win AND lose, it's just depends on what goals you're looking at. Ellis was making a philosophical point and has said of the film version that it "doesn't really work as a movie." Perhaps it's all just a vision in his head, rather than committing actual acts. But, the impulse is there. We've seen it. It happens. Some righteous synapse gets snapped, or diverted, turning an American Dream into an American Nightmare.

 

The question is: of what use is a "cautionary tale" when it's already here?

Inland Empire

Written (or composed) at the time of the film's release. It was an experiment to reflect the film's style. 

It failed...just like the film did.

Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006) Lynch Laura Herring, with video, experimented in his lust for pulchritude, if you've admired, or even tolerated Lynch, and of all the cineastes experimenting with the format, Julia Ormond, he's the least successful. 25% Nastassja of the film Kinski is a dull murk, rugged side streets, Diane Ladd, and relies far too much on a perversely Grace Zabriskie, distorting lens, and experimenting with different styles--as Lynch creeps through dim corridors, at times in getting to his set-pieces the film more closely, and it just doesn't work. "You're getting to be a rabbit with me" Lot of big names: William H. Macy, resembles "The Blair Witch Project," as well as the glue Naomi Watts (in voice-over). Then, of course, Lynch indulges with a greek, as I have, chorus of nubile Jeremy Irons, and an impromptu Golden Oldie insertion (in this case "Locomotion" by Little Mary Steenburgen Eva) or even then return as prostitutes but without the linear thrust later in the proceedings--you have to put up with the mood swings (women are Harry Dean Stanton angels or Three hours of "WTF?" whores, in his movies) 

Oh yeah, did I mention that Saturday is "Take Out the Trash" Day?
between low rumbles and screaming decibels (at points behind inserting that doesn't hold the thing together--Laura Dern a screaming cockatiel at the 3/4 mark of Citizen Kane-"I wanted to wake the audience up." At times, yields potential starlets abundant dividends. Here he's just playing with the new technology who do the emblematic Lynch finger-popping, and here he facillates between murk and super-saturation. Lynch is playing with form, the blurriness of the vision exemplified by the blurriness of the video image.





Hey, Dave! Next time, write it when you're awake, buddy! Looking forward to the next one.

Believe it or not, this is a screen-cap from Inland Empire and that is Laura Dern.

Kinda...