This little seen, largely forgotten Tim Burton (Big Fish, Sleepy Hollow) movie is in my opinion his best. I don't care what any of these "Batman," "Beetlejuice" die hards say.

"Ed Wood" tells the tale of the worst film writer/director of all time. That alone made me interested in seeing it. The biopic of a film history failure.

Edward D. Wood Jr., played solid by Johnny Depp (What's Eating Gilbert Grape?), begins as a struggling Hollywood playwright, until he gets B-movie producer George Weiss to hire him to direct "I Changed My Sex." Wood uses the opportunity to turn the project into "Glen or Glenda?," a biopic about his own fetish for dressing up in women's clothing.

Wood's further ventures to become the next Orsen Welles lead him into independent filmmaking when his notorious "Bride of the Monster" and the infamous "Plan 9 from Outer Space" were produced. "Plan 9…" was eventually pronounced the worse movie ever made by Variety Magazine's list of most horrible films. Comically, Depp as Wood refers to it in the movie as "The one I'll be remembered for." He was right. "Plan 9 from Outer Space" now has a cult following and video sales beyond the late filmmaker's dreams.

The picture also spends a great deal of screen time on Wood's friendship with classic horror movie actor Bella Lugosi (White Zombie), in the last years of his life, fighting his addiction to alcohol, heroin and morphine.

What the picture is REALLY about is, a filmmaker who had so little talent for filmmaking, but such a high talent for being a great friend. At every corner, Wood used his close friends in his movies, even though the decision compromised the quality of his pictures.

Depp is purely awesome in this picture, showing his ability for a character performance, recently displayed again in 2003's "Pirates of the Caribbean." However, every scene involving Lugosi is absorbed by the performance of Martin Landau (The Majestic), who won an Academy Award® for the role. Although looking nothing like Bela, Martin's voice and physical work was Lugosi several times over. There is a smart documentary about Landau's efforts with make up artist Rick Baker to obtain the aura of Lugosi on the "Ed Wood" DVD.

Other favorite performances came from Sarah Jessica Parker (TV's Sex and the City) as Ed's first girlfriend, actress Dolores Fuller. Bill Murray (Groundhog Day) appears as Wood's "stylish" friend Bunny, who offers a few moments of laughter.

For me, it was also fun to see veteran pro-wrestler George "The Animal" Steele as Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, who Wood used in his pictures many times.

The best part of "Ed Wood" was the visual style. Burton adopted a film noir look to the whole picture, resembling the poor lighting quality of Wood's pictures. The start of the film directly resembles the start of "Plan 9 from Outer Space," with Jeffrey Jones (Beetlejuice) as the phoney fore sayer Criswell, giving the film its prologue.

Going hand in hand with the film's visuals was Howard Shore's score, adopting many of the science fiction B-movie scores of the same era.

"Ed Wood" has so much great material from the title character and friends making his pictures and struggling to be somebody, attempting to make his friends somebodies as well. Filled with laughs, gags and very intense scenes with Lugosi's later problems, "Ed Wood" is pretty awesome.

I might add the screenplay was written by a duo known for writing quality and interesting biopics including "The People vs Larry Flynt" and "Man on the Moon," Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Alexander and Karaszewski where college roomies at University of Southern California.

The DVD has a lot of good documentary supplements regarding art direction for a black and white film, observing Burton's shooting style, creating Bela as an on screen presence, and the use of the rare Theronin for Shore's score. There are several deleted scenes, but none of them are half as funny as scenes cut from the original script. Rent this one. Its fun to watch, and good to know a movie could be made about such a failure of the movie industry.

Benn - Where's the Humanity?