And when you start thinking about the elements at the soft center of the story, they don't add up. I never could pin down the period it was supposed to be taking place in. In one flashback to the Alabama of the 1950s? 1960s? we see Edward as a boy with a group of friends including a middle-class black kid and you want to know whether someone's rewriting history--either Edward or the moviemakers--or what might explain this oddity. The obstetrician who delivers Will in the 1960s? 1970s? is also African-American. (Just a few of the many places where contrasting realism would add dimensions to the movie.) There's much more feel for the fantasy world than for the American South--again, romance chosen pre-emptively over realism. (One sign of this is the fact that Burton has not cast a single Southern actor in a major role. Can he really not hear how inadequate Danny DeVito's vocal technique is for the character of a blowhard Southern ringmaster?)
In addition, Albert Finney as the dying father doesn't come across as an older version of the enchanted young Edward we see in the stories. He's (too believably) an old bore who can always find a way around people's insistence that they've already heard a story, while his wife looks on with amused tolerance. Finney has had the misfortune to become one of those English actors who are cast for their names regardless of their fitness for a role. He hasn't furthered his technique but seems to have sunk into his gouty bulk. At times he can barely get the words out past his teeth. He carries a heavy-spirited atmosphere with him that's entirely wrong for a man who has made a parallel life for himself out of charmingly quirky yarns.
Finney does have a good, gape-mouthed look here when his son objects to his going on and on--it's the emblematic expression of the pest who can't even conceive that people aren't entranced by what he says. (Which is to say he's not as miscast here as he was as Dr. Sloper in Agnieszka Holland's faithful-isn't-everything adaptation of Washington Square (1997; I can't think of a role in Henry James that Finney would be right for).) And it's not his fault to the extent the movie doesn't really ask him to do something difficult, for instance, to get at the unsettling pathos of the father whose exertions to entertain his son are perceived by the son as a form of neglect.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Excellent penetration into the goop within as always - thanks Alan!
2 - Ken J
Great, another "ain't I a smarty-pants" style review. You know the kind, where the reviewer fawns over himself.
3 - karinbadt
very much enjoyed this review. Am a professor in Paris, and was about to use this film in a class, because so many people have recommended it, but found it absolutely vapid. It doesn't have the emotional payoff of Edward Scissorhands, and this reviewer carefully shows why the story itself doesn't work, with no real characters creating tension and depth. The softness of the story, the sappyness of the character construction, is not made up for by the cleverness of the imaginative clips.
4 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment, these many years later. They're always appreciated.