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Edward Scissorhands Customer Reviews (4 - 6 of 82 Reviews)

Tim Burton meets Tod Browning
With this darkly romantic and surreal fable Tim Burton got so one of the best " fantastique " movies of the ninenties as one of the most devastating satires of the "american way of life" and ,specifically, of the american middle-class. It's, then, not a circumstance that one of the most personal Hollywood directors has been "excluded" from the academic circles. Reinventing through the tradition Burton has known to combine intelligently several genres ( gothic terror, scienci-fiction, grand-guignol, melodrama ), different aestetich movements ( surrealism, expresionism )and popular icons putting, in its turn, a very personal care in the pictorial motives and the vanguardist design of his productions. In fact, Burton usually uses objects, architectures and plastic elements as narrative vehicles to show the oppositions and contrasts between characters and to get a subversion of our stereotyped, much of the times manipulated, way of looking the world: for example, the imbalance between the gothic-style castle where Edwards lives and the exhaustly kitsch design of most of the houses of the closer district. We find another subversion in the figure of the scientist ( Vincent Prince )that has created Edward, a character that smashes the mad doctor stereotype so habitual in low-budget horror movies. The disturbing look of the machines he has invented finds its exact opposition in the duties they do: they have been designed to make inoffensive, domestic tasks like to fabricate sweets. In the same way the threatful look of Edward contrasts with his humanity; a humanity that find its reverse in the foolish and pompous behaviour of his adultareted neighbours: the true freaks of the show, less than a caricature of the prefabricated societies and the emptiness that our beloved capitalism has carry us.





Great
I believe that Tim Burton's "Edward Scissorhands" is one of the director's finest moments and one of the best films ever made. The movie wouldn't look right with some other movies on my list of the best films ever made
(Pulp Fiction, Midnight Cowboy, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, etc.)
but, in it's own way...It is. That's not to say everyone will feel that way, I know a lot of people who hate this movie. The movie is one of those movies that starts off one way and ends differently. It starts as a charming fantasy and ends violently. Which is exactly the way it should end, but it would be nice to see a happy ending. The fact is, Edward Scissorhands could just as easily be about a person with a facial deformity or something simalar. The movie is about people's inability to accept someone who's different. I think that there's probably echoes of Tim Burton's childhood for sure, but anyway. The movie opens with an old woman telling her grandchild a story about the mansion on top of the hill, this is when we meet...Peg (Dianne Weist, 'Parenthood'), the local Avon lady who goes door-to-door unsuccessfully selling her products. The neighborhood is a surrealistic farce of suburbia. It looks like Stepford and has a group of women that gossip with each other about everything...Oh and of course, there's the Jesus Freak that instantly proclaims Edward to be Satan. But, anyway, Peg decides to travel to the creepy looking mansion that sits atop a hill looking over the neighborhood. When she gets there she finds Edward, an androgynous and scarred young man who has scissors for hands. He was created by an inventor (Vincent Price) but died before he was completed. Why the inventor chose to give him scissors as a substitute, we'll never know. Peg feels sorry for Edward so she brings him to her home and the neighborhood gossip stars instantaneously. Her husband Bill (the always delightful Alan Arkin, 'Eros') and her son Kevin ask no questions and accept Edward. No one really gives him a second thought. As Edward slowly makes himself at home and the neighbor's curiosity grows, Peg's daughter Kim (the beautiful Winona Ryder) arrives home and is the only person who is shocked to find Edward and even more disturbed that he's living with them. Edward, of course, falls in love with Kim. Then there's the character that messes everything up and that's Kim's boyfriend Jim (Anthony Michael Hall, TV's "The Dead Zone").
Finally, Edward becomes popular around the neighborhood; Trimming hedges and cutting hair, he also becomes the object of affection for many of the woman...Especially, the pseudo-slutty Joyce (Kathy Baker, who's been put to good use in Rodrigo Garcia's movies..."Nine Lives"). Anyway, you get the idea. Johnny Depp (one of my favorite actors) is fascinating, as always. As in all his movies, he disappears into the role...If I didn't know he was playing Edward, I probably wouldn't have guessed immediately he looks so different. All the actors are great; The art direction (by "Cat and the Hat" director Bo Welch) is an absolute wonder. If you've ever seen a Tim Burton film, then you know what I'm talking about. He's really great at creating his own little world. Most people have already seen this movie by now but I'll say this anyway. Not everyone will like this and most people won't like it as much as me. Although, many people will relate to how Edward feels in this movie. If you've seen a Tim Burton movie, then you know what his films are like...So you should be able to decide if you want to see this or not. But, keep in mind, definitely an aquired taste.

GRADE: A


A Nicole Review
Once upon a time in a castle high on a hill lived an inventor whose greatest creation was named Edward. Although Edward had an irresistible charm, he wasn't quite perfect. The inventor's sudden death left him unfinished, with sharp shears of metal for hands. Edward lived alone in the darkness until one day a kind Avon lady took him home to live with her family. And so began Edward's fantastical adventures in a pastel paradise known as Suburbia.

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