Tim Burton

Two pieces in the archive build the same charge against Tim Burton by two different routes. Andrew O'Hehir, writing on Sleepy Hollow, counts him a problem by now: at forty-one he is no boy genius, and we go on watching his films in the expectation that he will grow into a good director. Since Pee-wee's Big Adventure there has been potential throughout and no delivery, on that account, with two qualified exceptions, Ed Wood and the first Batman. Ryan Gilbey measures the reverse in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: the style has spread so far that even the smallest viewer arrives with the eye prepared, and in a film directed by his own former production designer the sugary suburban tableaux of early Burton come repackaged. He presses his personality hardest in the flashbacks, Gilbey holds, because there he returns to the parental tensions of Batman, Edward Scissorhands and Big Fish.