An all too often forgotten Tim Burton classic.

Rating: 9/10 (9 June 2010)

A black and white film about a horrible filmmaker made in the 1990s obviously wasn't going to shatter any box office records, or for that matter even break even. This movie in fact seemed to be forgotten and is never mentioned when mention of Tim Burton comes up. Despite the fact that this is possibly Burton's least known film, it is definitely one of his best. This is an outstanding comical character piece with stellar camera-work and direction, not to mention a cast that brings these oddballs to life.
The film follows Edward D Wood Jr. (Johnny Depp), the wannabe film director/writer/actor who worked his butt off to become recognized. It takes place from 1953 to 1959, and goes from Wood's meeting and friendship of Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau) to the making of Wood's best known film "Plan 9 from Outer Space".
This movie manages very successfully to be both funny and somewhat realistic. Mr. Depp gives an exaggerative performance at times, but is the performance unbelievable? Nope. And he never drops out of character either, so it just makes us believe Wood was a bit loony, but still likable. Martin Landau knocks his performance out of the park with his Academy Award winning performance as Bela Lugosi. Again, this character might be a bit exaggerated, but it still always feels real, and Landau plays on the Bela's frailties and emotions perfectly. Sarah Jessica Parker and Patricia Arquette are good as Wood's love interests throughout various points of his life also. The only cast member who may have been a tad bit unbelievable was Bill Murray as Bunny, Wood's eccentric manager. His performance was too goofy to believe sometimes. Nonetheless, still stellar performances.
The direction and camera work is really good, as is the lighting. The black and white accentuates the backdrops and scenes and also helps make this thing look really great. And to make the scenes even more lush, Howard Shore replaces Danny Elfman as the score composer, and makes the score just as good as Elfman would have likely done (No offense to the very talented Danny Elfman). The score which switches between corny sci-fi theramin score and beautiful brass and strings is just really fitting music for the film.
Episodic plots can become boring because they just go from one place to another and never set roots, but this movie is never boring. It's interesting to see the processes this guy had to go through just to make no budget films, and it's interesting to see his home life. It seems overall, Wood was an interesting fellow.
Overall, this is a really interesting movie, with enough humor to make it interesting, but not too much to make it stupid. And Johnny Depp's weird performance as Ed Wood doesn't stop the film from actually having a good amount of emotion and sentimentality. Definitely one of Burton's best films!
My rating: *** 1/2 out of ****. Rated R.