Beetlejuice (film)/YMMV

The Movie
""I am...alone. (Scraps, starts over) I am...utterly...alone. By the time...you read this...I will be gone...having jumped (scratches out jumped) having...plummeted...off the Winter River Bridge.""
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: Aside from Danny Elfman's title theme, the use of Harry Belafonte, including "Day-O", which is also a Crowning Moment of Funny.
 * Designated Protagonist Syndrome: The Maitlands, which may be why they were left out of the cartoon.
 * Die for Our Ship: A large number of the fandom actually supports Betelgeuse/Lydia. This has a lot to do with people watching the TV series when they were kids, which portrayed The B Man as having strong feelings for Lydia bordering on romantic, but this gets gross when you remember she was aged down to roughly 12 for the show. (See the corresponding entry in the cartoon section.)
 * Funny Aneurysm Moment: Sylvia Sidney plays a smoking ghost with a hole in her throat which emits smoke. Sidney died from throat cancer in New York City at the age of 88.
 * I Am Not Shazam: Due to their being homonyms, people make the mistake of thinking the character is named Beetlejuice as well, rather than Betelgeuse.
 * His name is officially "Beetlejuice" in the animated series - hence Lydia calling him "BJ."
 * The Maitlands have difficulty summoning him at first, as Adam thinks it's pronounced "Bay-tell-gice."
 * Additionally, despite the poster, the film credits make it clear that the title is Beetle Juice, not Beetlejuice.
 * Memetic Mutation: "I'm the ghost with the most, babe."
 * Squick:.
 * True Art Is Incomprehensible: Delia's sculptures.
 * Much of the film itself, to an extent.
 * Wangst. Lydia's suicide note is a little over-the-top.


 * Lydia's whole role in the film is a deliberate invocation of this. The Maitlands (and even Betelgeuse himself) essentially talk her out of this attitude, and by the end she's a changed girl.

The Animated Series

 * Alternate Character Interpretation: Beetlejuice is still a ghostly con artist, but he's no longer a lech. Lydia still likes gothic, freaky things, but she's no longer suicidal. Delia is still an oblivious flake, but instead of being a social-climbing urban yuppie on the cutting edge of fashion, she's a blissful, preppy, suburban homemaker who now seems to be Lydia's biological parent. Oddly enough, the only character that was in the movie that didn't change much was Lydia's father.
 * Only because there was nothing to change in him to begin with.
 * Die for Our Ship: Again, Beelejuice/Lydia.
 * Word of God states that Beetlejuice's attachment to Lydia was definitely more than friendly and was deliberately played up by the writers.
 * Wait, who is supposed to die here? ....Oh.
 * In the debut episode of the cartoon, Lydia was going to kiss B.J., until she saw the bugs in his teeth.
 * Depending on your preferred level of Squick, this COULD be either a Jail Bait Wait (low squick) OR Wife Husbandry (high squick). It's only eight or ten years 'til Lydia becomes an adult, and they can be dead together for a long time...
 * In Name Only: Due to the different premise, Lydia and Beetlejuice are friends now, and the Maitlands are nonexistent. Lydia is also considerably younger than the movie version.
 * Reverse Funny Aneurysm: When Claire Brewster loses election as class president in the episode "Running Scared," she immediately demands a recount.
 * Squick: You think Beetlejuice's crush on Lydia was creepy? At least BJ is relatively human -- in one episode of the cartoon, Lydia gets the unwanted attentions of an anthropomorphic bull ghost who wants to marry her. Beetlejuice even sees what Lydia's future will be like if she actually has to go through with it...yikes.