I will never forget this movie

Rating: Null/10 (12 November 1999)

I am a huge Tim Burton fan, and love all of his movies and own them, have watched them at least 10 times each, and each one is really special to me (I know how dorky that sounds) but this is the one I am the most emotional about. I can't think of any other movie that has made me cry as often during the course of the movie, or as hard. When I saw it in the theater, I wasn't just tearing up, I was sobbing by the end. During the scene where Vincent Price (God I miss him) perfectly cast as "The Inventor" tells Edward he has a special present for him and hold up a pair of perfect hands, only to slip away at the last moment, I looked around the 3rd time I saw in the theater, and literally everyone in the theater was choked up if not outright crying, including grown men. If I ever want to cry on demand, all I have to do is simply *remember* the last scene of the movie, and the last few lines uttered by the storyteller, and I tear up. Just pulling up the image of Ryder, spinning around in the 'snow' dreamily, can still bring tears to my eyes 9 years later. I think this is the only movie I've seen where I actually had to sit there all through the credits trying to pull it together because I couldn't stop crying. My friend and I were still sniffling walking out of the theater. Other women out there: this is not a movie to watch when you have PMS, not unless you want to totally break down in a sobbing, emotional heap. I was reading the transcript on the internet during my dinner break at work last month and started tearing up right at my desk, and I wasn't even in an emotional mood when I started reading it. There's so many great things about this movie-- Tim Burton is a genius, plain and simple, and the art direction is brilliant. His vision of suburbia is great, with rows and rows of identical, colorful 50's style tract houses and flawless green lawns. The imagery will stick with you long after the movie is over; for instance, the shot of the little girl, getting told a bedtime story (the film's framing device) in a huge, oversized bed, almost buried in all the quilts and pillows, or the inventor's workshop, with an assembly line pumping out gingerbread men. Elfman does do his best work (other than Beetlejuice). Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp were a couple at the time the movie was made, deeply in love, and it shows. It actually hurts to look at them, and Ryder, even with a horrible blonde wig, is stunningly beautiful and radiant. Just the way they look at each other, the longing in both their eyes, the tenderness when she says, "Hold me" and Edward replies sadly, "I can't", so Kim (Ryder) lovingly wraps her arms around him instead-- it gets me every time. All the casting is great (Vincent Price, especially -- obviously, Tim Burton got his dream cast for this one). Anyone who has ever felt like an outsider, or lonely, or longed for someone they know they will probably never end up with, will be touched deeply. (Starcrossed lovers always get to me). Yeah, I know. This all sounds very corny, but this movie is really in a class by itself.