Movie Review: Edward Scissorhands (1990)

The movie stars Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest, Anthony Michael Hall and Kathy Baker.

My wife and I came across this film on one of our movie channels this past weekend and, both because we had seen this movie before and it was getting late, we weren’t planning on watching it. However, we didn’t turn it off right away and, because of that, ended up watching the entire film anyway. And, as it turns out, it was a great choice.

As I mentioned, we’ve both seen this film before. However, as far as I can remember, we have not watched it together, meaning it had been quite some time before we had seen the movie. As a result of that, there were some parts of the film that we quickly discovered we didn’t remember and it ended up being very entertaining as a result.

The thing I really like about this movie is the makes you have to think about which character to be mad at. Depp’s Edward character is the obvious victim. But, there are plenty of times when he doesn’t help his cause, especially after the community becomes suspicious of him. And, the young woman he falls in love with (Ryder) is as guilty as anyone simply because she chooses to keep her mouth shut when she could help him. Heck, you could even blame Peg (Wiest) for bringing him home with her considering she knew what her neighbors were capable of.

The fact he does have scissors for hands does keep things somewhat interesting. On one hand, it makes me wonder what, exactly, his inventor (Vincent Price) was thinking because there are obviously better choices. But, having razor-sharp blades for hands also kept even simple tasks, like eating, from becoming boring because, as the movie showed us a couple times, one wrong slip and someone can get seriously hurt. If nothing else, it was a unique concept and, as I’ve said before, you can’t go wrong with unique, at least if your execution backs it up. And, it did in this movie.

This is a great, classic film with some outstanding acting and a very clever plot that is fun to watch. I would recommend taking the time to watch it if you haven’t seen it before or haven’t seen it in a long time.

My Grade: A