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Ed Wood (Special Edition) Customer Reviews (40 - 42 of 73 Reviews)

the 3rd best movie of all time
Midnight Cowboy, Born on the 4th of July, and... Ed Wood. Yes, these are my top 3 movies of all time, and Ed Wood had to be pretty awesome movie to get up there.
It's easier for a movie to be depressing. It's the simpler route to striking an emotional chord among audience members. If something is indescribably sad, then you can't poke fun of it. You can't laugh about it-- people DIED, dammit! And Ed Wood is one of the rare, non-depressing, actually inspirational great movies. It is uplifting- it shows how an opus (Plan 9 from outer space) can be created just out of ambition and self-confidence and determination. It shows the success that sprouts from self-acceptance. And the film is about the so-called worst director of all time! And he died of alcoholism-related things in the seventies! And yet Ed Wood still manages to be an inspiration!
So it's easy to call a happy movie cliche. Especially a happy movie with an old-fashioned directorial style (like the scene about Dolores' angora sweaters- she says something about them and he turns over to the camera with a guilty look on his countenance). But it has deep themes of friendship and it really questions society itself. The people in the movie- the freaks and outcasts- were rejected by society and then demonstrate their spark and vitality in the little movie world Ed makes.
So to conclude, it's funny, it's sad (but not overly so, almost in a textbook-like sense is it sad. What I mean by that is it shows the facts, but it doesn't dwell on them) and it's inspirational. Plus Johnny Depp is hot.

"I want it to end with a BIG explosion, smoke fills the sky"
Johnny Depp plays Ed Wood, who earned the distinction of America's worst movie maker. In post-war California Ed just wants to make pictures, even if it means stringing together bits of unrelated stock footage. The events portrayed in the film are true, little has to be embellished to make a comedy of a man's life when he did such off the wall things as getting himself and his crew baptised by a local church just to get some of it's members to invest in a movie. Wood is an eternal optimist and rather clever hustler who knows how to sling the bull, cut costs and corners and be convincing enough to pass himself off as a competent "B-movie" director. Wood thinks he has hit the jackpot when he has a chance meeting with Bela Lugosi (brilliantly played by Martin Landau), whose star has long since faded. The two are perfect for each other, Lugosi gives Wood a name he can attach to his marquee and Wood pays Lugosi the money he needs to support his unfortunate morphine habit. The supporting cast, including Sarah Jessica Parker and Bill Murrary, does a marvelous job portraying all the crazy people that filled the life of Ed Wood. One of the best roles goes to Jeffrey Jones as 'Criswell', a two-bit pyschic who got lucky by accidently predicting the Kennedy assassination, who helps instruct Wood on how to fake it in show biz. At times Wood is a clueless optimist at other times a cynical manipulator and always driven by ambition and the love of films, which makes him rather American and easy to like, just like this movie.

PULL THE STRING!!! PULL THE STRING!!!
Well, as most of you know, the DVD of Ed Wood does not exist right now. This is a farce. If ever a movie deserved to be immortalized on DVD, it's Ed Wood. This is one of the Top 5 comedies of all time and hands down the best Tim Burton film of all time. Martin Landau gives one of the best performances in the history of American cinema. Bela Lugosi was a very challenging role (with his drug addictions...not to mention his Hungarian accent). Landau pulls off the performance beautifully. Johnny Depp is his usual brilliant self as the ever-positive but often careless director Edward D. Wood Jr. Another very pleasant surprise in this film are the two comic villains in the wood production company: George "The Animal" Steele as Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, and Lisa Marie as Vampira, a 1950's Elvira. They both add a great deal of charm to this film and they both look stunningly similar to the characters that they play.

Bottom line: the performances are spectacular, the direction is flawless, and the story is true...you can't make this stuff up. I like to think of this film as both a comedy of circumstance about Ed Wood, but most of all a tribute to a man who was proud to be "in pictures."

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