A fable about fitting in ... or not.

Rating: Null/10 (14 August 2006)

I had seen this movie years ago, and recently found the DVD at my public library. Watching it again was almost like a fresh experience. Depp was very young, Ryder was a teenager, and they were perfect. The DVD extras has a few "sound bites" from several actors and the writer and I was particularly struck by how poorly the young Depp expressed himself. But that is history.
An old inventor (Vincent Price) living on the mountain at the end of the cul-de-sac in this flat Florida suburb has made this boy, Edward (Johnny Depp), but didn't have a chance to finish him when he dropped dead. Edward still had scissors for hands, and many nicks on his face from inadvertent cuts.
Peg (Diane Wiest) is an Avon sales lady and is having a particularly unproductive day, when she decides to drive up to the old house on the hill, go in, and try to find someone to sell Avon to. She encounters Edward and does what any mom would do, she took the orphan home, gave him some clothes, and sat him at the dinner table with the family.
Edward is, of course, very different. While the old inventor explained lots of things to him, Edward had never experienced social settings, he had no idea what real people did in real everyday life. Kim (teenager Winona Ryder, before her felony days) is Peg's daughter and she sort of takes a sympathetic liking to Edward, in the end defending him against her mean boyfriend Jim (Anthony Michael Hall). Kathy Baker plays Joyce, the over sexed neighbor who tries to seduce Edward, and Alan Arkin, sounding a lot like Christopher Walken, is the dad, Bill, who takes everything in stride.
The movie is mostly entertainment, seeing how this unusual character Edward copes with his new surroundings. But it is also a story about acceptance of someone who is different. Edward never quite fits in, even though he fascinates people with his skill, sculpting hedges or cutting hair. The movie has a somewhat dark ending, but the only one possible in this impossible situation.
SPOILERS FOLLOW. Jim is relentless, and ends up following Edward back to the old house on the hill, along with Kim. He is mistreating her too and, angry, Edward stabs him and Jim falls to the ground below, bleeding and eventually dead. Kim tells the gathering crown that Edward died in the building collapse, but in fact he was safe. Kim narrates the story as a very old woman and when the little girl asks if Edward still lives she says she is sure of it, because before him it never snowed, but now it snows every winter. And we see Edward using his scissor hands to carve yet another ice sculpture, and the fury of his actions send up a snow storm of sorts.