Compassionate...and bloody good fun

Rating: 8/10 (18 July 2005)

Director Tim Burton's comedy-drama about 1950s Grade-Z filmmaker Ed Wood is imbued with nostalgic heart and soul. Burton has always shown genuine feeling for outcasts and eccentrics: their passions make them outcasts--and the fact they don't realize it make them eccentrics. The pack of loonies following Edward D. Wood, Jr. around Hollywood aren't sycophants, they're his family. They're also a very funny, colorful bunch. The picture, shot in gloriously flat black-and-white (which matches the times, and mirrors the films of Ed Wood), has an episodic structure but wonderfully smart, canny dialogue from screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, adapting Rudolph Grey's book "Nightmare of Ecstasy". We clearly see what draws people to Ed Wood: he was a used car-salesman for the movies. Johnny Depp is excellent in the lead, most especially in his scenes with an unrecognizable Martin Landau in an Oscar-winning turn as a drug-addicted Bela Lugosi. When Ed is told Lugosi's health insurance has expired and he must leave the hospital, it's an extremely poignant moment that touches on a lot more than just a hack moviemaker struggling to keep his main "star" going. Burton is very effective at introducing us to a whole troupe of people we might normally recoil from, and he's sympathetic enough not to poke fun at anybody. There are weaknesses: some details are skimmed over and some sequences fail to take off. We see an awful lot on the making of "Bride of the Atom", but its raucous premiere is too easy a way to explain the public's reaction (was it given a general release? was Ed Wood able to make any money from it?). The large, perfectly-assembled cast seems right at home in these surroundings; if the performances are a little over-the-top, that's all right because Burton's perception of Ed Wood may be the same as ours: the man made silly movies, and he was a cross-dresser, but he was extremely passionate about both! Burton isn't afraid to get giddy over Ed's notoriously awful cinematic output. His film is a winner! ***1/2 from ****