overrated tripe

I have never understood the acclaim this movie gets. It's a variation of an old shopworn story formula done in 100s of other books/movies prior to 1990. The characters are one-dimensional cliche's who have meet-cutes and predictable reactions at all the right moments. They exhibit 0 development or growth and have no "arc" of maturation throughout the plot. (I'm beginning to think Tim Burton never read Joseph Campbell.) They behave like gullible sheep or a hive of bees who think in one mind whenever Edward's "image" gets improved or harmed, and exhibit no individual gumption or common sense. (The same problem is found among the easily-fooled Gotham populace of Burton's Batman Returns, but that movie had only slightly more action and events to justify the lack of development in other fields.)

This movie doesn't have an appropriate age level. The atmosphere is too dark and scary for children, yet the story and characters are too saccharine and simplistic for adults. Who is the target audience supposed to be?

The ending was a lame copout, but I have to admit it's consistent with the idea that the entire town population are intellectually lazy and unimaginative.

On the plus side, the setting, scene style, set design and music are good, but Tim Burton's habit seems to be to use those elements in place of any legitimate story or characterisation.

The whole thing feels like it should have been an hour-long (or half-hour-long) episode of a "Twilight Zone"-style anthology TV show, or a film short like Burton's Frankenweenie. It could even have been a Hallmark TV-movie-of-the-week and I might have liked it more had I watched it in that context. In fact, the same could be said of most Burton projects. He probably should have stuck to the shorts, since he really doesn't have enough writing capability to fill out a full length cinematic feature film.