TIM BURTON

By Norman Wilner

From The Toronto Star, 06.22.1991

"Vision" is an intensely personal way of looking at things. Orson Welles had it. David Lean had it. Tim Burton has it.

At 31, Burton is a whiz-kid visionary. His unique, surrealistic takes on the afterlife, superheroes and suburbia have made him one of the most successful directors of the past 10 years. Every picture has been a hit, and the 1989 Batman--only his third feature--is the #2 box-office champion of all time.

His fourth film, the gentle fable Edward Scissorhands, arrives on video this Thursday. And for anyone who's followed his work, there's no doubt that the man has a consistent vision.

After years as an animator for the Disney studios, Burton's first solo effort was a four-minute stop-motion short called Vincent. Narrated by Vincent Price (who plays Edward Scissorhands' kindly inventor), it was the story of young Vincent Malloy (a dead ringer for Burton), who passes his time fantasizing himself as Price and doing terrible things to his relatives and pets.

A live-action short, Frankenweenie, followed; an homage to James Whale's classic Frankenstein, with Barrett Oliver as a lad who reanimates his pet dog Sparky after losing him to a car.

After dabbling in television with a Fairie Tale Theatre episode and designing the characters for an installment of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories ("Family Dog," due on cassette next month), Burton moved to feature films with Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.

With Paul Reubens as the perennial pre-teen, Pee-Wee was a cult hit that allowed Reubens to create a TV series and a theatrical sequel (Big Top Pee-Wee, sans Burton and nowhere near as good).

Pee-Wee's success also allowed Burton to start production on the idiosyncratic ghoul comedy Beetlejuice, a runaway success that revitalized Michael Keaton's career, won an Oscar for Best Makeup, and introduced us to current big-screen heartthrob Alec Baldwin. (Burton has also has a hand in Nelvana's "Beetlejuice" animated TV series, as an executive producer.)

After Beetlejuice, Burton was given free reign on Batman, which was attacked for his controversial casting of chinless Keaton as the Dark Knight. All was forgotten after the film's release; it won an Oscar for Best Art Direction, created a year-long fad, broke all imaginable records and let Burton write his own ticket for the rest of his natural life.

To follow Batman, Burton turned to the more personal suburban fantasy of Edward Scissorhands, which took in more than $50 million at the box office last Christmas, and makes its way to video with its charm and warmth intact. Johnny Depp's sympathetic Edward, who again bears a marked resemblance to his creator, fits perfectly into Burton's prismacolor suburbia (bordered by a Gothic mansion--exactly the kind of eccentric juxtaposition that typifies Burton's films).

Up next for the director is another comic-book project, Mai The Psychic Girl, although either Batman II or Beetlejuice II may make it to the screen first (Batman II, with Danny DeVito as The Penguin and Annette Bening as Cat-woman, is slated for next summer).

But no matter what he does, it's certain that it'll have his trademark vision behind it.