After 38 years, Michael Keaton puts on the face paint again, portraying the character as if time has stood still. Photograph: Parisa Taghizadeh/Click to view the trailer.
Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! O’, the old tricolon. More people have been seduced by the whirlwind of repeating three words together in speeches and in the Finnish Parliament than have believed the Government’s claim that the cuts in social benefits and increases in VAT are necessary because Sanna Marin’s Government has done nothing but increase the national debt at a time when the Chinese bat virus had stopped everything that was known as fun.
It’s also a useful tool for calling the dead three times and they will appear. Bloody Mary … yes, Beetlejuice … but it’s also such a strong rhetoric device that even gangsta rappers trust it blindly.
“Say my name three times like Candyman/Bet I roll on yo’ ass like an avalanche . . . ,” rapped Tupac Shakur in the song “Troublesome 96,” not realizing that the correct number to invoke the urban legend that appears in the mirror with a bloody hook and kills anyone who says his name, this time around, is five.
So what? Tricolons are good for director Tim Burton (also known for e.g. Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a dark horror-comedy treat that belies even the most cynical assessments of the 1988 classic of its genre, also directed by Burton. Thirty-five years ago, as the ’90s approached, some critics blamed the film’s lack of magic on its reliance on gimmicks rather than character. After re-watching the first one, I can’t back up those lame claims, as Michael Keaton transforms himself into the bio-exorcist Betelgeuse (pronounced Beetlejuice) to help the Maitlands family—where the wife, Barbara, played by Geena Davis, whose former real-life Finnish husband and director Renny Harlin once said, “It felt like Geena was 10 times more in love with me after seeing Cliffhanger,” and when Harlin later, on stage at a festival in Finland, after asking the audience if they’d been “lucky” enough to find a playmate at Midsummer (‘If not, there’s still time! ‘), Harlin introduced himself to the young crowd as the lucky son of a gun for finding his wife, his playmate. (Not on Midsummer’s Day, but who cares?)
‘90s in Finland …. O tempora o mores!
On the same stage, in Virrat, Pirkanmaa to be exact, at the now defunct Rantarock event, Harlin and Davis continued to entertain the audience in Finnish. Renny asked, Geena answered.
“After seeing the Finlandia Hall, Turku Castle and Olavinlinna Castle, which is the most interesting building architecturally?”
“The outdoor toilet,” Davis replied.
And so much for that. There’s no Davis in the sequel, and Harlin is known these days for directing movies in China.
