Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Director: Tim Burton

Writers: Tim Burton, Caroline Thompson

Starring: Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest

Rated: PG-13

It’s Christmas time! Or if not Christmas time for some – the holidays FINALLY. Of course I wanted to find a holiday movie to review this December so I thought I would ignore the alphabet rule just this once but…turns out I didn’t need to as the random holiday movie I picked was Edward Scissorhands – one of my all-time favorites.

For those of you who haven’t seen it it’s directed by Tim Burton and stars Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest and a whole lot of other awesome people, one of them being the “nerd” from The Breakfast Club!

The movie is actually a flashback; in the present, an old woman is telling the story of where snow came from to her curious granddaughter. The story goes like this…So this really old and eccentric Inventor (Vincent Price) creates a young man named Edward (Johnny Depp). He’s very handsome (it’s Johnny Depp I mean duh) but not quite complete. Before the Inventor could finish Edward, he passed away, leaving Edward with scissors instead of hands. We assume Edward stays up in the Inventor’s huge house for many years as it has become dilapidated and is also now surrounded by a small, simple suburb.

Anyway, the movie begins with Peg Boggs (Dianne Wiest), an Avon saleswoman making the rounds not having very much luck at selling anything. She’s kind of desperate so decides to venture to the giant creepy mansion at the edge of the perfect little neighborhood (think Count Olaf if you know who that is) to see if anyone lives there and if they do would they like to buy beauty products. So she obviously comes across Edward and eventually decides to take him home with her – a spur of the moment kind of decision…

Turns out as odd and kind of dangerous as Edward appears to be he is a kind soul whose only wish simply seems to be loved and accepted by someone. He stays with Peg, her husband (Alan Arkin), and two kids Kevin (Robert Oliveri) and Kim (Winona Ryder) for a few months and has an…interesting time. He and Kim develop a non-physical but very strong relationship and he finally gets the loving family he always wanted. The thing is he just doesn’t really fit in…

Okay I keep mentioning the neighborhood without really describing it. I mean it’s Tim Burton and if you don’t already know he’s known for having the gloomy clash awkwardly, yet brilliantly, with the bright and cheerful. Edward Scissorhands goes a little farther and is like Tim Burton meets Dr. Seuss. Does it sound weird? Well it is but it’s amazing. The whole movie kind of makes fun of American culture in the 1950’s with the whole perfect neighborhood, perfect families, etc. and it isn’t until Edward – or “change” – comes for a visit that things get chaotic. The housewives are all ridiculous as they are obsessed with gossip and other people’s business (such as Edward himself). So are the husbands because they are all oblivious to the change and are only focused on…I don’t know being husbands? But what my dad pointed out the other night when we watched it together was that underneath the obvious plot of Edward coming to stay with the Boggs’ was this other issue of kind of fitting into a group of people. Peg and her family are very different from the others in the neighborhood, yet they also find themselves trying to be socially accepted by their judgmental neighbors. Of all characters, Kim succumbs to this pressure the most in a scene I won’t spoil and for a moment we kind of find ourselves hating her. But, then again, we also have to think of it as simply crumbling under peer pressure – a popular issue in the world of teens.

This movie is kind of hard to review as I’m so familiar with it and am tempted to just tell you the whole story because it’s so great. But don’t worry I won’t!

I think all of the actors played their characters so well and had us believing that this unbelievably ridiculous town was real. While their physical appearances were perhaps a little on the unrealistic side, their characters were so familiar that we saw the world they live in as very true to our own.

For Burton fans out there who maybe haven’t seen this movie, I don’t think you will be disappointed. It’s a bit more of an emotional rollercoaster than some of his other films but it still holds that dark humor we all know and love – you just may happen find yourself crying at the end and it’s my favorite Tim Burton movie for this very reason.