"Edward Scissorhands" is, if anything, the proof that even a flawed film can be a classic. The timing helped a little: it came out in 1990 when Johnny Depp was still the hearthrob from "21 Jump Street" and starring in a make-up-prop-and-weird-look role was a novelty (hard to believe that these times ever existed), and it was a time where suburbs were still the darlings of comedies driven by social comment attempts and when fantasy wasn't that blockbuster provider relying on CGI and it's to Tim Burton's credit to propose a little parable about human difference acceptance without overplaying special effects.
Now let's set this straight: the art-design of the old manor are magnificent and the ominousness of the place magnificently rendered through the shadowy atmospheres, Danny Elfman's haunting score and the presence of horror-icon Vincent Price. You could tell how enamored Burton was with German expressionism and the design of Edward's birthplace is so convincing that the rest looks rather pale in comparison: even in pastel colors, the suburban palette has a sort of factice blandness that can't get away with the excuse that Burton wanted to criticize conformism. Lynch did the same in "Blue Velvet" but remember how vivid and artificially bright the colors were in the opening sequence. In "Edward Scissorhands", the town looks like a giant maquette and even the house's interiors are curiously unfurnished.
Ironically, the same criticism can be drawn against the characters who feel sketchy and two-dimensional at best, literally alternating between two modes: curious and fascinated by Edward and then angry and eager to have him punished. That ability to switch from a Capraesque colorfulness to the mob-lynch mentality of Springfield citizens from "The Simpsons" is one of the film's biggest cheats. It provides us a gallery of interesting characters but no one is given a proper arc, it's just "like Edward" and "hate Edward", just as the love interest Helen (Winona Ryder) switches from "no feelings" to "true love" without a scene that could connect them realistically, apart from that ice-sculpting moment. Burton's script is full of artifices whose main purposes is to advance a plot from stages that I could visualize with bullet points on a draft.
So that's the storyline: Peg (Dianne Weisst) finds Edward, he discovers the world, he tries to fit within the family, having a few interactions with Daddy (Alan Arkin) and Kevin (Robert Oliveri from "Honey, I Shrunk the Kid"), showing his talent for trimming house-front yews, giving them original silhouettes, cutting dogs' and then people's haire. Suddenly, we have the jealous boyfriend (Anthony Michael Hall) who for no reason at all hates Edward, the burglary attempt that destroys his reputation and an awkward scene that ends with the gossipy neighbor (Kathy Baker) pretending she was assaulted... and the population buying that in a pavlovian reflex. These bits could have worked had the plot followed that storyline but no, it precipitates us to the final act, set at Christmas time, where everything seems to point Edward as the villain, and knowing that he's misunderstood was the most infuriating part.
Ebert notoriously disliked the film for having a no-brainer final act and a conclusion that had to rely on the villain's death, I was surprised that he didn't mention the very term he coined: the idiot plot. It's one thing that Edward looks like a villain, it's one thing that the kid didn't see the car coming at him when Edward pushed him away, it's one thing that Dad saw Edward leave the house with determination without hearing Jim's insults. I could accept that, but how about the fact that Kim never tells the truth about Jim, is the mob so deaf to her pleas that she couldn't even shout that Edward didn't hurt or her brother intentionally? Even worse; Peg who was the lead for the whole first act becomes so frustratingly passive that it's a real blow against the motherhood she initially displayed.
The problem is that Burton had so many boxes ticked; the character (Depp is touching as the poor little creature with that eternal sad look), the design, the whole 'acceptance' theme that he needed to rework his screenplay. First, there a poor man's Margaret White as the bigoted woman who sees the devil in Edward, her presence never really pays off then you have Kim popping up halfway through the film making impossible to understand how she could fall in love, Peg is bizarrely underexploited at the end, not even for a little talk to her daughter and don't get me start on the boyfriend's murderous impulses. Except for our scissor-handed friend, it's annoying that all characters are just designed to do whatever the plot requires them to do, exuding a falseness worse than the bourgeois vanity denounced by Burton, they're fake not because of their reactions but their characterization. Edward and Kim have some chemistry and the film the imagery but the script is just where the devil is in the details.
I got that the film intended to denounce our approach to difference or handicap, with curiosity at first and then suspicion and then sheer rejection, the whole "who's the monster?" trope codified in "Frankenstein" but there was much to explore with the film... how about Helen not having a boyfriend and falling in love with Edward? How would the parents react? How about a true relationship with the kid? How about having a real treatment of handicap? It's like Burton decided to turn a fairly decent material with a different look into another monster thriller with dark undertones. And even with that approach, the treatment was rudimentary and I've got to love the irony that of all the movies "Edward Scissorhands" is the one that needed more trimming.
And to think that it's the movie that prevented Winona Ryder to star in "The Godfather Part III"...
Now let's set this straight: the art-design of the old manor are magnificent and the ominousness of the place magnificently rendered through the shadowy atmospheres, Danny Elfman's haunting score and the presence of horror-icon Vincent Price. You could tell how enamored Burton was with German expressionism and the design of Edward's birthplace is so convincing that the rest looks rather pale in comparison: even in pastel colors, the suburban palette has a sort of factice blandness that can't get away with the excuse that Burton wanted to criticize conformism. Lynch did the same in "Blue Velvet" but remember how vivid and artificially bright the colors were in the opening sequence. In "Edward Scissorhands", the town looks like a giant maquette and even the house's interiors are curiously unfurnished.
Ironically, the same criticism can be drawn against the characters who feel sketchy and two-dimensional at best, literally alternating between two modes: curious and fascinated by Edward and then angry and eager to have him punished. That ability to switch from a Capraesque colorfulness to the mob-lynch mentality of Springfield citizens from "The Simpsons" is one of the film's biggest cheats. It provides us a gallery of interesting characters but no one is given a proper arc, it's just "like Edward" and "hate Edward", just as the love interest Helen (Winona Ryder) switches from "no feelings" to "true love" without a scene that could connect them realistically, apart from that ice-sculpting moment. Burton's script is full of artifices whose main purposes is to advance a plot from stages that I could visualize with bullet points on a draft.
So that's the storyline: Peg (Dianne Weisst) finds Edward, he discovers the world, he tries to fit within the family, having a few interactions with Daddy (Alan Arkin) and Kevin (Robert Oliveri from "Honey, I Shrunk the Kid"), showing his talent for trimming house-front yews, giving them original silhouettes, cutting dogs' and then people's haire. Suddenly, we have the jealous boyfriend (Anthony Michael Hall) who for no reason at all hates Edward, the burglary attempt that destroys his reputation and an awkward scene that ends with the gossipy neighbor (Kathy Baker) pretending she was assaulted... and the population buying that in a pavlovian reflex. These bits could have worked had the plot followed that storyline but no, it precipitates us to the final act, set at Christmas time, where everything seems to point Edward as the villain, and knowing that he's misunderstood was the most infuriating part.
Ebert notoriously disliked the film for having a no-brainer final act and a conclusion that had to rely on the villain's death, I was surprised that he didn't mention the very term he coined: the idiot plot. It's one thing that Edward looks like a villain, it's one thing that the kid didn't see the car coming at him when Edward pushed him away, it's one thing that Dad saw Edward leave the house with determination without hearing Jim's insults. I could accept that, but how about the fact that Kim never tells the truth about Jim, is the mob so deaf to her pleas that she couldn't even shout that Edward didn't hurt or her brother intentionally? Even worse; Peg who was the lead for the whole first act becomes so frustratingly passive that it's a real blow against the motherhood she initially displayed.
The problem is that Burton had so many boxes ticked; the character (Depp is touching as the poor little creature with that eternal sad look), the design, the whole 'acceptance' theme that he needed to rework his screenplay. First, there a poor man's Margaret White as the bigoted woman who sees the devil in Edward, her presence never really pays off then you have Kim popping up halfway through the film making impossible to understand how she could fall in love, Peg is bizarrely underexploited at the end, not even for a little talk to her daughter and don't get me start on the boyfriend's murderous impulses. Except for our scissor-handed friend, it's annoying that all characters are just designed to do whatever the plot requires them to do, exuding a falseness worse than the bourgeois vanity denounced by Burton, they're fake not because of their reactions but their characterization. Edward and Kim have some chemistry and the film the imagery but the script is just where the devil is in the details.
I got that the film intended to denounce our approach to difference or handicap, with curiosity at first and then suspicion and then sheer rejection, the whole "who's the monster?" trope codified in "Frankenstein" but there was much to explore with the film... how about Helen not having a boyfriend and falling in love with Edward? How would the parents react? How about a true relationship with the kid? How about having a real treatment of handicap? It's like Burton decided to turn a fairly decent material with a different look into another monster thriller with dark undertones. And even with that approach, the treatment was rudimentary and I've got to love the irony that of all the movies "Edward Scissorhands" is the one that needed more trimming.
And to think that it's the movie that prevented Winona Ryder to star in "The Godfather Part III"...