It was interesting to revisit this film 25 years after I first watched it. Overall, I don’t think the narrative held up, though I think Edward Scissorhands is such an iconic character, that this movie can skate by even without a solid plot. Diane Wiest remains my favorite “mom” from 1980s films.*
Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home
*see: Footloose, Parenthood, this movie. Also don’t forget her overwrought actress in Bullets Over Broadway. “Don’t speak!”
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1990/edward_scissorhands_ver1.html
This is one of those movies, like Reality Bites, that I would desperately like to love, but I simply don’t. I never got the appeal of this one, and with the way that Johnny Depp’s acting went in the years after this, I now see it as the beginning of his descent into kookiness. I concur about Dianne Wiest though. An excellent 80s movie mom – she was the mom in Lost Boys, too!
Wow! Like you I have not seen this movie since the theater, I think. Interesting that the premise doesn’t really hold up.
This was the last movie of Vincent Price. For that reason alone, it is special. I think, if you honestly look at all of Johnny Depp’s characters, they are a little bit kooky.
And he grows distractedly more kooky as time wears on. I’d like to see him do a straight drama, or even a comedy where he plays a man without makeup etc. He’s playing Whity Bulger in a movie coming up, but he’s pretty obscured by the makeup job.