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| Johnny
Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest, Alan Arkin, Anthony Michael Hall,
Vincent Price |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
4.0 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Kim:
Hold me.
Edward: I can't.
An
artificial man with scissors for hands is drawn into a suburban community
where he is first accepted but which later turns against him.
 The
clearest example of both director Tim Burton's strengths and his weaknesses,
Edward Scissorhands allows a Gothic fairy tale to collide head-on
with the banality of Californian suburbia. This provides a great many
memorable scenes and visions: the hideously decorated and dressed houses
and their inhabitants are simultaneously stylized and completely believable,
while Johnny Depp's performance, which is basically a pantomime role,
strikes just the right note, giving the story an emotional center that
holds the movie together.
Burton does a phenomenal job combining these two worlds, except for
one element that feels artificial and leaves a somewhat unpleasant aftertaste:
the unfriendly teens like Anthony Michael Hall's bad-guy boyfriend are
astoundingly clichéd and bring a sense of mean-spiritedness that
doesn't blend at all with the suburban satire or the fairy tale elements.
This is a real pity, as it gives you the feeling that a beautiful, touching
and clever story is being rudely interrupted by a really bad 1980s teen
drama.
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Edward
Scissorhands is available for Region 1 and Region 2 in identical
releases.
The
anamorphic widescreen image is framed at 1.85:1 and is a very good new
transfer. Colors sometimes seem a little pale, but this is almost certainly
due to the source print, which otherwise shows no defects at all. Black
levels are good and deep and detail is excellent.
The soundtrack is presented in a new Dolby Digital 4.0 mix. Danny Elfman's
score is given a soundstage that is deep and wide, while other sound
effects and dialogues remain clear and intelligible in the front speakers.
For
a 'Special 10th Anniversary Edition', the extra features on this DVD
are a little disappointing. The 'featurette' is a very short promotional
item that doesn't run over 6 minutes, and the 'concept art' gallery
features six (count 'em) sketches.
There's a trailer section with the two theatrical trailers, an English
TV spot and - bizarre but very funny - two Spanish TV spots (for the
movie 'El Joven Manos de Tijera').
Thankfully, there are also two audio commentaries, one from director
Tim Burton and one combining a music-only soundtrack with commentary
from composer Danny Elfman. Burton's commentary is unsurprisingly understated.
He once again does his best to provide what footnotes he can on the
movie's production and concepts, but he's not the most verbally articulate
person in the world, and often falls silent for long stretches or mumbles
some semi-incoherent musings. As on Pee-wee's Big Adventure,
Danny Elfman proves more adept at providing verbal asides on the movie's
musical themes and their inception, and his score is equally enjoyable
as a stand-alone musical experience. The
animated menus are presented in the form of a pop-up storybook. The book
opens and the camera swoops in on the pop-up castle inside. It's beautifully
done, with various appropriate score elements used for background music.
The only annoyance is the trailer advertising other Fox DVD releases
that is always played before the menu sequence starts. Fortunately this
can be skipped.
Dan Hassler-Forest
Reviewed: 2001
Click
here for IMDB info on Edward
Scissorhands .
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to return to the front page.
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