Here is my review which doubles up as my English Coursework so here goes!!!!

Plot Summary

The film is a fairytale type film about a creation called Edward that was never finished by his creator. The part of Edward that was never finished was his hands, so instead of Edward having normal hands with fingers, Edward has scissors in their place. Edward lives alone in the same gothic castle that he was created in, and hasn’t been outside the gates of the castle at all. However one day Edward is surprised to find that the ‘Avon Lady’ (Peg Boggs) turns up at his castle trying to sell Avon products. Peg Boggs then takes Edward to live with her family after she saw how Edward was living. From this point the film is pretty basic and we see Edward trying to adapt to normal living after being alone all of his life. When Edward is living in the neighbourhood below his castle he gets into a lot of trouble with the police, because of a boy that took a disliking to Edward. As Edward fails to become like a normal person he is forced to return to his gothic castle, much to the dislike of the person that he has fallen in love with, Peg Boggs’ daughter.

I think that the film is quite good, however there isn’t really a complex storyline, which I tend to like in a film. I think that think that the film is very easy to understand, however in places a little to far-fetched, which takes it past the point of the story being believable, which in a way spoiled the film because there was nothing to really set it out from any other fairytale stories, which made the film less exiting than it could have been.
Johnny Depp plays the character of Edward. I think that he is the best possible actor for the part, as he seems to have great facial expressions that really make the viewer seem part of the film. It is because of Johnny Depps’ facial expressions that we know that Edward is an outsider. We see Edward looking quite nervous around people, and rightfully so, as he is not used to being near people as he has always been on his own in the past.
There is a lot of contrast in the film Edward Scissorhands. For example we see a shot of Edwards huge gothic mansion that is all black, but when we see the shot of the neighbourhood below the mansion, we see that it is very colourful and has perfectly mowed lawns and trimmed hedges. The neighbourhood below Edwards house is a very tight community, which is something that Edward had never seen before. He had never seen how perfect everything was in the neighbourhood, and I think that is why he found it so hard when he was taken to love with Peg Boggs, because he had never had a perfect life that was run so tightly, and where nothing ever seemed to go wrong – until he arrived there. Another contrasting point in the film was actually between Edward and the other people living in the neighbourhood. Edward is a very gothic-type person who is pale-faced and wears black clothes, whereas all of the people in the neighbourhood were, again perfect and had perfectly organised lives. I think that it is because of this ‘perfect ness’ that Edward found it so hard to settle into the neighbourhood, because if anything Edward was used to things being so disorganised in his life before.

Costume & makeup

The types of clothes that Edward wears throughout the film are very important. We first see him wearing his black gothic clothes, with his pale face, but when Peg Boggs takes Edward to live with her we see him wearing ‘normal’ clothes that Peg has given him. I think that because of the clothes that Edward wears we really get an idea of him being an outsider, and that he cannot ever be normal even though he is wearing normal clothes. The makeup that Edward has on his face also plays a part in the film. Edward has a really pale, gothic face, and I think that because we are so used to seeing people wearing makeup like that today, that we don’t really think about it, but nearly 15 years ago when the film was made, it was quite unusual to see people looking gothic. I don’t think that if the film would have been made in 2004 that we would have really set Edward out as an outsider, from his makeup, because we are now used to seeing many more gothic people than we were in 1990. I think that the makeup of the other actors in the film also set Edward apart from everyone else because the women seem to wear bright makeup, and the men have totally normal faces. So it is because we don’t see any other gothic looking people that Edward looks totally different to everyone.

Camera Angles

Again the camera angles throughout the film are also very important. When we first see Edward we see him through the eyes of Peg Boggs. It is because of this camera shot that we see him as an outsider in the corner of a dark room, trying to hide himself from civilisation. I think that another great way that the director makes the viewer think of Edward of an outsider is when he uses the camera angles to show Edwards hands. He does this by using a camera shot that looks like we are looking down on the huge scissors through Edward’s eyes, really exaggerating the size of the hands, and because we aren’t used to seeing things like that we see Edward as even more different and as an outsider. We see this kind of camera angle all the way through the film, from when Edward is trying to eat dinner with the Peg Boggs’ family, to when he is cutting his neighbours hedges and even their hair.

Music & Soundtrack.

I think that the soundtrack to the film really sets the film up as a fairytale story. The music that is played throughout the film is quite sad music, but still seems to give the film a more cheery sound. There film doesn’t really have an extensive soundtrack, and in fact I think that this makes the film seem longer than it really is. Most of the music that we hear is the same song as the opening title sequence and the credit sequence at the end of the film. I think that this seems weird in a film, because we are so used to hearing music all the way through films today.

Conclusion

The film Edward Scissorhands is a Frankenstein type story that is based on a ‘monster’ that was created by his master. Although we don’t really see Edward as a monster, we do see him as an outsider like the character of Frankenstein. When Edward is settling in to the neighbourhood, we get the feeling as if he is learning to become a ‘normal’ person, and that he is beginning to understand how things work in everyday life. However, we soon see that Edward starts getting in trouble with the police etc - which I think was a very clever part of the storyline - because we now see Edward separated from normality even more now. The director really makes us think that just because Edward is beginning to settle into normal living, it doesn’t make him a normal person, and that Edward never will be a normal person, as long as he is a ‘creation’ and as long as he has his giant Scissorhands.
I think that the aim of the director was to set Edward as an outsider, and he certainly achieved this using a number of methods throughout the film. To do this he used camera angles – with things like showing Edward’s massive Scissorhands, makeup and clothing – where we saw Edwards black clothes and gothic pale facial makeup and also a lot of the feeling of Edward being an outsider came from Johnny Depp’s facial expressions, when he would look nervous around people, or act strange in the company of others because he was an outsider, and he wasn’t used to it.

My Opinion

I think that the film is very easy to get into, and although the storyline isn’t that complex it is a film that you really have to concentrate on to understand what is happening, because the storyline moves quite quickly from start to finish. I think that the film is definitely worth watching, but not really a film that you could watch again and again.