Pointless film about a forgettable figure

Rating: 1/10 (25 August 2009)

This picture is such a good example of the living end of the American sense of humour, it's astonishing that Jud Apatow did not produce it. The basic material is amusing enough: the story of a movie director so pathetically bad that he never even tried to make a good film. Amusing, that is, for about 10 minutes before the real feature begins. Sadly, director Tim Burton is not able to spin out the talentless Ed Wood's forgettable career into a proper movie because of sheer lack of story. The man managed to pull off one ghastly failure after another far into mid-life, when television mercifully put an end to his efforts. The only angle available is his failed attempt to resuscitate the career of Bela Lugosi (Landau), an ancient vampire ham from silent days. Anyone who remembered Landau's comic role in Woody Allen's Crimes & Misdemeanours would not be surprised by Landau's rich comic creation here. But it's wasted on Depp's Ed Wood, who only has two facial expressions: brazen self-confidence and perplexed frown. There must be about half a per cent of the movie-going public that is interested in the basement range of bad films produced in the 1950s, and for them this will be de rigueur, but for everyone else, forget it.