Director Tim Burton tells a very unique way to present a story. And this is put to a great extent in his 1990 film “Edward Scissorhands”. It’s basically a modern-day fairy tale that Burton created with the help of Johnny Depp playing the title character. This film brings together some of the elements that make a good movie. We have a perfect cast, an amazing musical score, and a misunderstood character that we actually care for. There are a few setbacks that do not fit well with the movie at all, but the overall production is well worth watching.
The story is that an elderly woman is telling her granddaughter the story of how this character named Edward Scissorhands came to be. After a saleswoman (Diane Wiest), named Peg, stumbles upon an old mansion, she finds Edward hiding in a dark corner. Peg asks if there is anyone else in the mansion is here, and Edward replies that his creator (played by Vincent Price in his final film) is sleeping, but to us he’s dead. Seeing the terrible condition he’s in, Peg takes Edward home due to her kind nature. Once settled in the house, Edward becomes a handyman doing all sorts of various chores that people ask of him. He even takes a special interest of Peg’s daughter, Kim (Winona Ryder), much to the dismay of her boyfriend Jim (Michael Anthony Hall), who sees Edward as a guy whom he can jape at. Everyone in the community starts to like Edward, most notably the housewives for who he is. But after a burglary suspicion involving Edward, the town starts to think twice about him. Yet Kim still thinks Edward is sweet, innocent, and a wonderful person.
“Edward Scissorhands” excels in storytelling by showcasing a character that gives you a certain fear once you first see him. But as the movie progresses, you, as the audience, start to like him by the end of the film. And this is done through the acting of Johnny Depp; he plays this role to a full extent that he is Edward. Depp may steal the show here, but the other actors do a fine job as well. With performances by Ryder, Hall, Wiest, and especially Price, the main cast does a pretty good job in this movie. Along with the acting, the sets provoke the mind of Tim Burton, and Danny Elfman once again gives us an excellent musical score to boast, all fitting well within the movie. This film is great, but it only suffers from a few minor problems.
The only drawbacks that I had with the film include the movie being too short and the third act didn’t improve a lot with the story. “Edward Scissorhands” tells its story very quickly; mainly focusing on Edward, but it would have been nice to give a little more detail on the other characters. This comes into play into the final act of the movie. While the first two acts of the movie created a fantasy element to the film, the third act, however, pulls the plug on the fantasy element and decides to focus more on the dramatic element. Here we focus on Edward but we see him being responsible for a bad guy. This final act is somewhat underdeveloped and is only here to share some moments with Edward and Kim.
Overall, “Edward Scissorhands” brings Tim Burton’s vision of a fairy tale, or in this case a bedtime story, with wonderful results. Although it’s a little short, and the last section of the movie gets off the subject matter, it’s still a good film. This movie is a brilliant piece of cinema, and definitely worth seeing the mind of a director.
Good review. I agree with the performances and the quick pace. One thing that bugged me about this movie (which I did like, by the way) was that I felt that the character of Edward Scissorhands was just a marketing ploy to bring in the audience and distract them from some of the film’s flaws. I would have preferred Edward to be a normal human being with a troubled past, or more fittingly a character that looks like trouble.