In Place Of Eyes - A Tim Burton Mini Marathon

In Place Of Eyes - A Tim Burton Mini Marathon

Featuring Partially Educated Reviews of

Beetlejuice

Edward Scissorhands

Ed Wood

Big Fish

and Frankenweenie

The latest film from Tim Burton came out on Boxing Day. It's called Big Eyes and you could be forgiven for not knowing about it, because nowhere seemed to be showing it. As a result, I am yet to see the latest work from one of my favourite directors of all time, so I decided to re-watch some of his other films instead.

If there's one thing that's been lacking from some of Burton's more recent work, it's a distinct lack of imagination. Though his visual touch remains, only one of Burton's films (Corpse Bride) has been created without a previous source material to inspire it. His own bizarre mind hasn't fully unleashed itself on us for quite some time. When you look at some of the original stories he's made, that's a real shame. Case in point: Beetlejuice. A film about a recently deceased couple (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) enlisting the services of a deranged at best bio-exorcist to remove the new occupiers of their past home. For the audience, this film will be all about Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice and the film comes to life when he's in it. Despite the fact that he's the title character, this is rarer than you would perhaps expect and the first half of the film is focussed heavily on Baldwin and Davis. That's not really a problem, as Baldwin and Davis do play decent protagonists, but once you've met Beetlejuice, you'll spend other scenes wondering where he's gotten to. Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O'Hara are also great as the new occupants, while Winona Ryder is fine in the pivotal role of Jones and O'Hara's misfit daughter. Quite honestly, I've never been the biggest fan of Ryder, because you can always see her acting rather than becoming the character. Pretentious though that sounds, it's fairly similar here, but not to too bad of an extent. For all the good that's on show here, it's fairly safe to say that none of it would be possible without Burton's vision, bringing so much twisted imagination to proceedings that it's hard to not be in awe of it. The curse of the 80's means that the effects are horribly dated, but the film is so original that these are offset by an enjoyable story that has amazingly survived without too many rip-offs following it. Perhaps more screen time could have been afforded to Keaton in favour of pretty much everyone else, but with the rumours of an impending sequel, we may very well be getting to see more of him. Then again, that might pay off as well as Anchorman 2.

FOUR out of five

Prepare for an arse kissing. I have a friend who once tried to suggest that Edward Scissorhands was nowhere near as good as people made it out to be and that I only liked it so much because of my own bias towards any suggestion that Burton is anything less than a genius. Since then, that person's opinion has been worth about as much to me as the dirt that gets sandwiched into the ridges of the sole of my boot. Edward Scissorhands is as good as anyone will tell you. As far as I'm concerned, unless someone cites it as one of the best films ever made, they're underselling it. I'm well aware that is a statement that could lead to anticlimax when it comes to raised expectations, but it's too late now. After the "unfinished" Edward (Johnny Depp) is discovered by kindly Avon lady Peg (the exceptional Dianne Wiest), he is bought to live with her. Having been locked away for the entirety of his previous life, Edward has no idea of behaviours or principals of the world around him and thus must learn as he goes along, adapting the use of his scissor hands to become of use to society. Unfortunately, Peg resides in a garish suburbia, filled with some the scummiest examples of the human race, all entirely convinced of their grasp on civility. The downside of this means that outside of Edward and his family, the film is populated almost entirely by arseholes. The upside is that this gives us some awesome performances. Top mention goes to Kathy Baker, as Joyce, a poisonous example of what happens when the prom queen achieves nothing afterwards. Anthony Michael Hall also gives us the last great performance of his career (unless a miracle happens) as Jim, the ingratiating brute that happens to be dating Peg's daughter (Ryder again). With Ryder having conjured up the butterflies in Edward's artificial stomach, this obviously doesn't sit well with Jim, bringing the absolute worst in an already reprehensible character. Ryder's performance is the strongest I can think of and any Depp haters can rest easier knowing that while the performance has it's quirks, it's a very understated and subtle one, far removed from the likes of Jack Sparrow and recent abomination Mortdecai (more on that next week). With a script that oozes depth in it's every word and scene, it's a fairly safe bet that Edward Scissorhands will be featuring in the next Top 10 I do. Actually, scrap that, it's a guarantee.

FIVE out of five

Obvious (and inexperienced) statement of the day: Hollywood is one hell of a cynical environment to work in. Every bit as quick to condemn as they are to gush, this means that directors like Ed Wood can at least be remembered, if only for the wrong reasons. It's fairly fitting though that Burton was the one to make the film about him, given that there's so many parallels between their works. Not in quality of course, but in their determination and obsession with realising their visions. At the end of the day, that was all Wood wanted to achieve and, to a degree, he succeeded. It just wasn't all that enjoyable for the people that had to watch it. With this biopic, Burton is out to neither criticise Wood, nor mock his works, instead presenting the life of Wood in a style that the man wanted to achieve in his own films. From the opening monologue of hack psychic Criswell (Jeffrey Jones) to the caricatured depiction of these real life characters, there's lots of nods to Wood's own films. Depp plays Wood with the lack of restraint that he would go on to push further and further, but it's yet to get irritating here. Meanwhile, Martin Landau earns his Oscar, by playing Bela Lugosi in the way that people probably imagined him to be, rather than the way he probably was. This is Lugosi in his later years and thus at his lowest low, but the campiness and overplaying are backed up by a human touch that shows Lugosi coming to terms with his impending departure from this Earth and his attempt to give himself that one last great role. In this respect, we see the less pleasant side to Wood. Though he never descends into anything outright nasty, nor are his intentions ever coming from a bad place, Wood is shown to be a master manipulator: taking money from people under false promises and forming his own little troop of cast and crew in what borders on his own cult of personality. These are necessary touches, but instead of sneering, they feel like Burton's attempts to help us understand the man on the basis of his intentions, rather than the result of those intentions. Sadly, Ed Wood is now known for being more of a cult classic, pretty much because it's a great film that tanked. Unlike Wood's own films though, this is worth watching not because of it's own failings in quality, but because of the fact that it's fate was grossly undeserved.

FIVE out of five

Well, this is crushing. I watched this film when it first came out and loved it. Really loved it. With it being a good decade or so since I'd last seen it, I was more than amped up for a second viewing and must now disappointedly report that while it's still good, it's not quite as excellent as I remembered it. As the ageing Edward Bloom (Albert Finney) lies on his death bed, his estranged son (Billy Crudup) comes to his side in one last attempt to fully understand his father. This isn't as easy as it would seem, because Bloom has always told his life story through the use of wonderful (but undeniably impossible) adventures. What we get is a reflective piece in which we follow the life of Bloom (played in younger form by Ewan McGregor) through these tall tales, leaving us to question not the validity of the tales, but the validity of their use as a removal from the likely mundanity of real life. The film looks beautiful, framing the heightened events in entirely real world settings in order to avoid things straying too far into the fantastical. Unfortunately, we're taken through them by McGregor, who plays the confidence of the central character to the point where it descends into pure arrogance and the character becomes horribly unlikeable. It seems we're supposed to take against the people who can't stand him, but it's just so easy to see why they hate him so much. His stapled-on cheshire cat grin renders his face so gratingly punch worthy that any time it does come to some harm, you can't help but laugh a little. This, on it's own, would be enough to cripple a film, but fortunately a variety of supporting roles help to bring some enjoyment into things. Steve Buscemi and Danny DeVito deserve mentions, but so too does Crudup, who takes on a moderately thankless role, but proves to be the anchor that holds the film in place. Any annoyance that the audience may feel towards Bloom is echoed in Crudup's own feelings, meaning there's always him to relate to when things go a bit too far. Also on the positive side, the ending is very well played, managing to bring things together in a way that's far more cohesive than the film would have you believe it's going to be. It's deeply sentimental and this may annoy some, but I can only speak for myself and I enjoyed it. These things are enough to make Big Fish a good film. It's just a shame that I remember it being so much better.

THREE out of five

Following Big Fish, Burton's career went a bit downhill with a few remakes, the decent, but unremarkable Sweeney Todd adaptation and his revival of Dark Shadows (another unfortunate entry I'll be dealing with next week). While Frankenweenie may have been one of those remakes, it was at least refreshing to feel that there was a real purpose to it. Burton takes his little seen short and gives it the wider exposure that he feels it deserves and that feels like filmmaking for all the right reasons. On the face of it, Frankenweenie would seem like a deeply pretentious offering from Burton and the casual film viewer could be forgiven for dismissing the film outright. Though the film masquerades itself as a family cartoon, it likely won't work for a lot of family audiences. Instead, it's a cartoon that's really for film and, more specifically, Burton fans. It's not a very well kept secret how much Burton is influenced by the Boris Karloff version of Frankenstein, to the point where he paid full tribute (or should that say ripped off) that film's windmill sequence in Sleepy Hollow. Instead of one scene, Frankenweenie's entire runtime is an homage to that film. When the young Victor Frankenstein's dog Sparky is run over and killed, he sets about re-animating the dog, but finds that hiding his achievement from everyone else isn't particularly easy. The film uses similar stop-motion animation to Corpse Bride, but the most notable stylistic choice is that the film is entirely in black and white. There's a joke in Woody Allen's Celebrity about black and white being only used by directors wanting to convince the audience of their own artistic integrity and that may be slightly the case here, but if taken in context of the film's stance as tribute, he just about gets away with it. It's also quite ironic that the film is produced by Disney, given that the animation decisions seem to be Burton's own way of sticking two fingers up at that company. Early in his career, he worked as an animator for them, but found his animations for The Fox And The Hound getting rejected because they "looked like roadkill". Bar the dog, there's no animals here to roadkill up, but there are plenty of children to present in an exceedingly creepy way. These kids are not the typical aspirational visions of supposed greatness that you would normally see, but fit far more into the role of misfits. That Burton presents us with precisely zero examples of the "cool kid" is further testament to this really being his baby. This is a film that's much easier to enjoy if you're equipped with an understanding of Burton himself, but really, it never sparks in that way that helps it to stand on the story alone. For someone like me, Frankenweenie is enjoyable enough. For others, I'm not so sure.

THREE out of five

Next Time (12th February)