Soon Edward is so much at home that he is virtually a household convenience, helping Peg snip threads when she sews. (He also inadvertently punches holes in her waterbed.) But he soon becomes part of the household and part of the community, despite insensitive questions - like "Do you know about bowling?" - from the locals. When Edward first arrives in suburbia, he is so flustered that he scares Kim away.
As lovely as she is diffident, she makes an enchanting Beauty to Mr. Ryder plays Kim Boggs, the daughter of the Avon lady, Peg, and a dryly deadpan patriarch (played by Alan Arkin). It's also in keeping with the film's reasoning that the explanation for this, when finally revealed, isn't nearly as interesting as promised. Ryder, in the former capacity, promises to explain to a grandchild what the story of Edward Scissorhands has to do with snowfall. Similarly, the film makes no bones about depicting Winona Ryder as a white-haired granny in the not noticeably futuristic prologue, and as a high school girl, circa 1960, when most of the action takes place. It is very much in keeping with the film's fearless, defiant illogic that these shrubbery sculptures should appear where no shrubs grew before. On the lawns of these houses, more and more of Edward's singular topiaries - in the forms of a ballerina, a penguin, a set of bowling pins and so on - begin to appear. This time, with production design by Bo Welch ("Beetlejuice") and cinematography by Stefan Czapsky, it involves bright colors in unlikely combinations, for instance, a lavender-suited Avon lady driving a dandelion-yellow car) and fashionably ridiculous late-1950's artifacts placed prominently throughout the characters' bunkerlike homes. Burton's films, the production design is the central good idea, perhaps even the sole one. They make a great sight gag, if not a great metaphor.Īs in each of Mr. The inventor died just before he could equip Edward with human hands, thus leaving him with these scissor-bladed prototypes. Burton's when the director was still a young Disney animator) neglected to complete. Those hands, which quiver uncontrollably when Edward experiences strong emotion, are the one aspect of the young man that his creator (played by Vincent Price, who was a hero of Mr. The film, if scratched with something much less sharp than Edward's fingers, reveals proudly adolescent lessons for us all. In the case of "Edward Scissorhands," which opens today at the Ziegfeld, that something is a tale of misunderstood gentleness and stifled creativity, of civilization's power to corrupt innocence, of a heedless beauty and a kindhearted beast. Burton invests awe-inspiring ingenuity into the process of reinventing something very small. Like a great chef concocting an exquisite peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, Mr. His "Edward Scissorhands" is as crazily single-minded as a majestic feat of dog barbering, with much the same boldness, camp ebullience and fundamentally narrow wit. So the Avon lady brings the outcast back to her home, where he amazes the neighbors with his rare feats of snippery. Seeing Edward, she immediately grasps that he has a problem and sweetly imagines that it can be solved with kindness, not to mention the makeup base of exactly the right hue. But one day, as seems perfectly reasonable in the ripe, fanciful pop universe in which "Edward Scissorhands" unfolds, a thoughtful Avon lady (Dianne Wiest) pays a visit. He uses his extraordinary gifts to create magical artworks that, he imagines, no one will ever see.Įdward has apparently hidden here for a long time, with nary a trip to the grocery store. Atop a forbidding gray mountain, in yet another of the strange and ingenious outposts that the heroes of Tim Burton's films ("Batman," "Beetlejuice," "Pee-wee's Big Adventure") call home, Edward Scissorhands lives in isolation. AT the far end of a suburban enclave, where the houses huddle together like a candy-colored wagon train, there stands a monument to lonely genius.
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