"Worst film you ever saw. Well I'm sure my next one will be much better."

Rating: Null/10 (10 September 1999)

Tim Burton. He's a great storyteller. The first two Batman movies were well directed and nicely performed by its stars, and had some other good elements. Edward Siscorhands was very poetic and good, and Depp was terrificly sympathetic as the protagonist. I loved The Nightmare Before Christmas and I think it is one of the best animated films of all time. Mars Attacks! was very comical and I seemed to enjoy it more than everybody else did(though I would have liked to see stop-montion flying saucers).
But he was born to direct this movie. This movie is so offbeat and so oddly comical it could have only been done by him. And throughout this film you can see clearly that Burton understands Ed Wood. Any other director given this script (and an excellent script it is) would have rewritten and made fun of Ed Wood. They would have scoffed at him and lobotimized the character for laughs. But not Burton. He plays Ed's relationships with the other characters so well. Ed befriending a dying Bela Lugosi is very well done. Not too gushing with emotions but not too rigid, he plays it like they're friends. Bela is played superbly by Martin Landau. Bela knows the movies he's making are not the high quality pieces he was making in the thirties, but he's happy he's getting work and that somebody has faith in him enough to put him in one of their movies. That somebody is as big a fan of Bela's as Ed is. Ed's the shining light in old Bela's life.
And Ed. Somebody knew there was a story in Ed Wood. You feel sorry for the guy, knowing he's gonna turn out to be a porn director. An average Joe who wears Angora sweaters and is so upbeat he doesn't let pesky little things like huge executives denying him a movie. And that's where the movie succeeds the most. Ed's such a likeable guy. In the movie, there's not a mean-spirited bone in his body. He'd never back-stab one of his friends. And Johnny Depp. He's great. He's been a great actor before, but has always played a deadpan personality, but in this he's over the top and very comical.
On one last note, there's on great shining star in this movie: Bill Murray. He has a good time playing Bunny Breckinridge, the homosexual sex-change-wannabe.
All in all a great comedy. I hope I didn't make it to serious sounding, because really it's a great comedic film. The movie is just downright, out-and-out funny.