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100
|
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
A comedy of the ridiculous in which the ridiculous turns unexpectedly sublime.
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100
|
USA Today Mike Clark
Half-factual, half-fanciful and all funny, this labor of love is also unexpectedly touching. [28 September 1994, Life, p.5D]
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100
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Chicago Tribune Gene Siskel
One of those rare films that communicates the exquisite joy of the moviemaking process. [7 October 1994, Friday, p.B]
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88
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Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
What Burton has made is a film which celebrates Wood more than it mocks him, and which celebrates, too, the zany spirit of 1950s exploitation films - in which a great title, a has-been star and a lurid ad campaign were enough to get bookings for some of the oddest films ever made.
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80
|
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Turns out to be a thoroughly entertaining if eccentric piece of business, wacky and amusing in a cheerfully preposterous way. [28 September 1994, Calendar, p.F-1]
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80
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Washington Post
Making a movie about the life of Ed Wood certainly qualifies as an impossible dream, but Burton has pulled it off with wit, imagination and something amazingly close to grace.
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75
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San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann
Burton has trouble sustaining the briskness of the first half. But the brilliance of many individual scenes, and the extraordinary performance by Landau, are more than enough to justify this goofy, tender ode to eccentricity. [7 October 1994, Daily Notebook, p.C1]
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70
|
The New York Times Elvis Mitchell
If Ed Wood has a major failing, it's the lack of momentum. Wood's career had nowhere to go, and to some extent the film has the same problem. [23 September 1994, p.C34]
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63
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ReelViews James Berardinelli
The most interesting personality in Ed Wood is not the title character, but Bela Lugosi. So covered up with makeup that he's barely recognizable, Martin Landau gives a deeply-felt performance -- a eerie and stunning recreation of a man haunted by lost fame.
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60
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Washington Post Desson Thomson
Burton has evoked the surface of Ed Wood's life, but in a story about a man who loves angora and frilly panties, he has barely unbuttoned Wood's uniform.
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