Breaking out of his 21 Jump Street TV persona, Johnny Depp inhabits the sweet, sensitive manufactured man of the title—upsetting the homogenized, automated equilibrium of a Fifties-esque, candy-colored suburbia. Discovered hiding in the local dark castle by the Avon lady, Edward was an unfinished invention of Vincent Price’s loving scientist; his creator died before he could add the final touch: his hands. Edward’s unusual industrial-Gothic appearance and dangerously sharp appendages soon become the talk of the town, and his sympathetic, adopted parents—played by the perfectly cast Dianne Wiest and Alan Arkin—must manage the mob as their carnival-like curiosity quickly turns to Frankensteinian fear and frenzy. Meanwhile, Edward falls in love. Tim Burton’s delightfully bizarre modern-day fairy tale is a bittersweet holiday refuge for all the broken misfits out there who often feel vulnerable, isolated and misunderstood.