JOHNNY DEPP AS TEEN WHO'S SHY BUT HANDY 'EDWARD SCISSORHANDS'

By Joe Pollack

From The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 12.14.1990, Five Star Edition

Picture a teen-age boy, in the throes of adolescence. He's clumsy; he drops or otherwise damages everything he touches. He has a complexion problem; his face is broken out and he is embarrassed about it. He is almost mute when he tries to talk to teen-age girls; he stumbles and stutters and cannot get the words out. This describes a great many teen-age boys, and it probably describes writer-director Tim Burton, who seems to be dealing with his angst in Edward Scissorhands.

For much of the way, Burton instructs us to welcome strangers, even if they have sets of scissors where their hands should be, and he warns us against the type of immature public conduct that followed Iben Browning. Kind, gentle people are good, until they turn nasty, and boors and bullies are bad. Then the film turns extremely violent, and although an epilogue tries to soften it, the sudden violence is disconcerting, and may disturb small children.

Dianne Wiest, a perpetually cheerful Avon lady, finds Johnny Depp, as Edward, in a gloomy mansion right outside of town. He's clad in black, and his stark, white face is marked with scars and punctuated with a bright red cupid's bow mouth. His hands look like the window of a cutlery shop, but it doesn't bother her. She invites him home and moves him into her daughter's bedroom, vacant because the young woman (Winona Ryder) is on a camping trip.

Depp was built by a wild genius, Vincent Price, who also invented a cookie-baking machine that is a thing of Rube Goldberg beauty. But Price died before he was able to attach Edward's real hands. So Depp is a mechanical man, an indestructible creature, and Burton cheats by keeping that fact mostly under wraps.

Depp is wonderful. He is low-key and quiet, speaks little but offers volumes with his expression and his few words. A scene, late in the movie, tells almost all: A disheartened Depp is sitting on a curb, deeply saddened. A sheep dog, with hair everywhere, arrives and stands beside him. Depp turns, allows just the trace of a smile, then casually reaches up and clips just enough hair to allow vision. It's wordless; it's lovely.

Burton, who also directed Batman and Beetlejuice, again creates a highly stylized environment; this time it's a suburb somewhere with pink and green and tan tract houses, and a family right out of '50s sit-coms. Alan Arkin is the father, Wiest the mother, Ryder and Robert Oliveri the children. They accept Depp with few questions.

Depp certainly is handy--or scissory--around the house. He creates topiary in the back yard and coiffeurs for dogs and women, chops lettuce for salad, even serves as a shish kebab skewer. Unfortunately, those sight gags, charming as they are, don't last long enough and don't bear repeating as often as Burton tries.

Anthony Michael Hall, the bully who is Ryder's boyfriend, becomes extremely jealous of Depp, and sets up the violence, but he's a cardboard character, as is Kathy Baker, the neighborhood sexpot who sharply reminds Wiest not to knock on the door when the plumber's truck is in the driveway. There's a lot that is delightful about Edward Scissorhands, thanks to Depp's performance and Burton's imagination. Unfortunately, the director gets carried away from time to time, and those sequences harm the film.