is a surprisingly touching film, anchored by the wonderful performance of Johnny Depp as the title character, a young man created by an eccentric inventor (Vincent Price) who has built Edward with scissors for hands. The inventor dies before he can finish his creation by giving him real hands, leaving Edward alone in the inventor's gothic mansion. Avon lady Peg (Dianne Wiest) is in her neighborhood trying to make a sale, but no luck.
She decides to pay a visit to the mansion where Edward lives. The art direction and sets for Edward Scissorhands are great, evoking a sort of 1950s kitsch aesthetic version of suburbia, with all of the houses painted in pastel colors. The inventor's mansion looms improbably over the community, a dark and foreboding structure.
Tim Burton has always had a great eye for imaginative visuals, and Edward Scissorhands is one of his best films in that regard. As usual, longtime Burton collaborator Danny Elfman provides the film's fantastic score. Back at the mansion, Peg has wandered in and discovered Edward cowering in a corner, dressed in a black leather outfit that wouldn't be out of place at a Cure concert, with wildly unruly hair and a pale face marked with scars.
Peg can sense that Edward is lonely and offers to bring him home with her. Edward agrees, and is transported into Peg's pastel world. The neighbors are curious at first, as the town gossips phone each other to wonder who it is that Peg has with her.
Peg returns home to her husband Bill (Alan Arkin) and son Kevin (Robert Oliveri). They are curious but accepting of Edward (Kevin wants to bring him to school for "show and tell"). Peg puts Edward into her daughter Kim's (Winona Ryder) room for the night.
Kim has a waterbed, which proves to be something of a challenge to sleep on when you have scissors for hands. At first, the community is accepting of Edward. He's carved their hedges into topiaries and proves to be not only a talented sculptor, but also a whiz at grooming the neighbor's dogs and giving the neighborhood women stylish haircuts.
Edward's outlet for his emotion and creativity is through his sculptures, since he doesn't have the vocabulary to express those thoughts verbally. When Kim returns home, Edward is smitten with her, but years of isolation have made him very shy and quiet. Edward doesn't say much and expresses his anxiety by twitching his scissors.
One of the neighborhood ladies, Joyce (Kathy Baker), is attracted to Edward, and attempts to seduce him. Edward doesn't know what's going on and rejects Joyce's advances. Edward soon finds himself the neighborhood outcast he's just too strange for suburbia.
Kim's thuggish boyfriend Jim (Anthony Michael Hall) is jealous of Edward, having seen how Edward looks at her. We know a confrontation is inevitable. As I've mentioned earlier, Johnny Depp is marvelous as Edward, conveying emotion with his body language and facial expressions.
Edward is a gentle soul, but is cursed because, due to the sharp scissors he has for hands, he would only hurt someone he cared about. Kim is finding herself attracted to Edward's sweet and innocent nature. In a beautiful scene, we see Edward carving an ice sculpture of an angel as Kim observes, dancing in the "snow" created by Edward's ice sculpture.
Kim falls in love with Edward, but it can never work. In one scene she asks Edward to embrace her, but he cannot due to his sharp hands. She instead embraces Edward in a touching moment.
Circumstances bring about Edward's fall from grace in the eyes of the community. Edward saves Kevin from being hit by a car, but in doing so accidentally cuts Kevin. The community thinks Edward did it on purpose (he had previously accidentally cut Kim's hand) and turns on him, led by Kim's hotheaded boyfriend.
Edward is forced back to the mansion and a confrontation with boyfriend Jim turns deadly. is a surprisingly touching film, anchored by the wonderful performance of Johnny Depp as the title character, a young man created by an eccentric inventor (Vincent Price) who has built Edward with scissors for hands.
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