EDWARD SCISSORHANDS; JOHNNY DEPP TURNS CUTUP, IMAGINATIVELY

By Roger Fristoe

From The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), 12.14.1990, Metro Edition

Only a filmmaker of Tim Burton's impudence and ingenuity could get away with Edward Scissorhands, a weird little fable about a man-made boy with enormous pruning shears where his fingers should be. Employing his trademark visual bravado, the director of Batman and Beetlejuice creates compelling entertainment from a thin, whimsical screenplay by Caroline Thompson that could have become ludicrous in less masterful hands.

Johnny Depp stars as Edward, whose scientist "father" died before he could replace the boy's metal fingers with more conventional digits. The mad inventor is played by Burton's early idol, horror impresario Vincent Price; his casting adds a nice resonance to the proceedings.

Since the scientist's death, Edward has led a solitary life in a spooky castle on a hill overlooking a typical suburban neighborhood as envisioned by Burton: a series of identical, characterless homes done up in ghastly combinations of glowing pastels and inhabited mostly by soulless conformists.

Edward's lonely existence is interrupted by Peg Boggs (Dianne Wiest), an Avon lady whose professional cheer has been tested by lack of response from her middle-class neighbors. Venturing into Edward's domain with hopes of making a sale, she's terrified, then touched by this wild-eyed android with foot-long blades at the ends of his wrists.

Peg (whose generous good nature is sweetly conveyed by Wiest) unofficially adopts Edward and brings him home to live with her family, comprised of a comically complacent husband (Alan Arkin), a boisterous young son (Robert Oliveri) and a prom-queen daughter named Kim (the gifted Winona Ryder, utterly unrecognizable from her Mermaids incarnation).

On a personal level, Edward is a shy klutz who rips his clothing and repeatedly scars his own face with his razor-sharp "fingers." But when his creative side is released, he wows the local housewives by artistically sculpting their hedges, their dogs and even their coiffures.

For a time Edward enjoys his status as neighborhood celebrity. But trouble erupts when he becomes infatuated with Kim--much to the annoyance of her bullying boyfriend (Anthony Michael Hall) and a sex-starved matron (Kathy Baker) who sees kinky possibilities in Edward's unconventional appendages.

The difficulties of finding artistic freedom in a cynical, conformist society certainly form a timely subject. But Thompson's sketchy script is a facile treatment of the subject, leaving Burton's bold visual schemes (adroitly realized by production designer Bo Welch) to provide the movie's real power.

Kentucky-born Depp, who became a teen idol on television's "21 Jump Street," here tackles an even more offbeat role than in John Waters' Cry- Baby. With clownlike makeup and Chaplinesque body language, he creates a character that's vivid, wistful and lovable.

This disciplined and imaginative performance offers heartening evidence that underneath that teen-throb facade beats the adventurous heart of a real character actor.