Edward Scissorhands (Blu-ray) (1990)

"...amusing and inventive...Burton builds a surrealistically funny cul-de-sac world, and there are some very funny performances...  Desson Howe, The Washington Post
"A classic...Edward Scissorhands is a sharp salute to the oddball in all of us.  Jay Scott, The Globe and Mail
"Simple, funny, gorgeous, sad, and sweet, perfect for playing over and over.  Lawrence O'Toole, Entertainment Weekly
"A witty comedy of manners that arcs into poignance...One of the brightest, bittersweetest fables of this or any-year.  Richard Corliss, Time
"A delightful and delicate comic fable.  Variety

Editor's Note In Tim Burton's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, a suburban fairy tale with incredibly imaginative sets, an Avon lady, Peg Boggs (Dianne Wiest), discovers the half-finished experiment--a man/monster named Edward (Johnny Depp)--of a mad scientist (played magically by Vincent Price) living in the neighborhood's old abandoned castle. The scientist died before replacing the shy man's large shears with real hands. When Peg attempts to bring Edward into her suburban world, to live among her skeptical family (husband Alan Arkin and daughter Winona Ryder) and gossipy neighbors, his hands--dangerous yet capable of creating things of great beauty--make for some awkward, funny, and poignant situations: Edward as a topiary gardener, Edward as a cutting-edge hair stylist. EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is a story about tolerance, difference, and creativity as much as it is a story of a young man's coming of age (the young man in question is, of course, a monster). In the ironically surreal world of Edward's suburban community, he must try to find his place in it, and in the world at large.

	Alan Arkin
	Anthony Michael Hall
	Biff Yeager
	Dianne Wiest
	Johnny Depp
	Kathy Baker
	Vincent Price
	Winona Ryder
	Bo Welch - Production Designer
	Caroline Thompson - Screenplay
	Colleen Halsey - Editor
	Danny Elfman - Original Music By
	Richard Halsey - Editor
	Richard Hashimoto - Executive Producer
	Stefan Czapsky - Cinematographer
	Tim Burton - Producer
	Tim Burton - Director
	Tim Burton - Based On Story By
	Tom Duffield - Art Director

A fairy tale, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is a brilliant story of a man-made experiment: a monster with long shears for hands. Edward lives in the dark and forbidding castle, overlooking a brightly colored suburb, until the Avon lady comes calling one day. Her motherly instincts tell her to take this poor, lonely creature home to live with her family. There, Edward goes through a series of growing experiences, some of them funny, some of them frightening, while trying to find his place in the world. Rolling Stone
"...The year's most comic, romantic and haunting film fantasy....Burton is a true movie visionary with uncommon insights into hearts in torment..." 01/10/1991 p.53-4

Sight and Sound
"...Eye-catching, ingenious..." 07/01/1991 p.42

Los Angeles Times
"...The whole film has a tender underlining and a marvelous fun-house look and pace....Gentleness is a nice quality to have back in movies. Along with some fairy-tale pain, longing and hilarity, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS has it..." 12/14/1990 p.F1

Total Film
"...A fairytale with an edge....Just as affecting a decade on..." 12/01/2000 p.112

Total Film
"Depp's oddball hero transforms cute, quirky sentimentality into emotional palatability..." 07/01/2006 p.128

Wall Street Journal
"[T]he best part of Tim Burton's sweet-tempered fantasy is that the hero is played by the ever-surprising Johnny Depp..." 05/01/2009

Reel.com 9 of 10
Part fairy tale a la brothers Grimm, part suburban satire, Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands is the film that rescued Johnny Depp from TV teen-idol hell and made him a star...Edward Scissorhands is undoubtedly one of Tim Burton's most personal films. Burton's work, from Pee-wee's Big Adventure to last year's Sleepy Hollow, and even including Batman, celebrates outsiders. Burton's sympathies clearly lie with those society spits on. That's never been more clear than in Edward Scissorhands, where Burton brilliantly lampoons a suburban lifestyle of Sunday barbecues and coffee-clutching gossips...For Depp, Edward Scissorhands would set a trend. His first, big-screen starring role is anything but normal leading-man material and since then, Depp has filled his resume with equally offbeat characters...Depp's Edward is nearly mute and he infuses the character with a sweet, shy quality. His performance is almost that of a silent film star -- it's easy to imagine Buster Keaton or Harpo Marx in the role and almost impossible to envision any modern actor besides Depp in it. - Pam Grady

Chicago Sun-Times 6 of 10
The director Tim Burton wages a valiant battle to show us new and wonderful things. In a Hollywood that placidly recycles the same old images, Burton uses special effects and visual tricks to create sights that have never been seen before. That is the good news. The disappointment is that Burton has not yet found the storytelling and character-building strength to go along with his pictorial flair...All of Burton's movies look great. "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" was an unalloyed visual delight, and so was "Beetlejuice," and "Batman" gave us a Gotham City that was one of the most original and atmospheric places I've seen in the movies. But shouldn't there be something more? Some attempt to make the characters more than caricatures? All of the central characters in a Burton film - Pee-wee, the demon Betelgeuse, Batman, the Joker or Edward Scissorhands - exist in personality vacuums; they're self-contained oddities with no connection to the real world. It's saying something about a director's work when the most well-rounded and socialized hero in any of his films is Pee-wee Herman. - Roger Ebert