Victor, Victoria, and the Bride from the Underworld

Rating: 8/10 (26 April 2006)

A marriage of convenience goes bad and has the hero wind up in a very different place. Victor Van Dort is the hero, and he's a shy kind of guy, a little moody looking -- you wouldn't call him the life of the party. His parents are little more than annoying types, but they're not nearly as nasty as the Everglotts, who are the kind of people who would kill anyone's happiness with one glance. The mother, especially, barks about like a militant Mrs. Danvers, and considers her daughter Victoria little more than a sad otter. If that's tender, motherly love, I can only wonder what mild disdain might feel like.
Anyway, the parents, Victor, and Victoria get together to rehearse their wedding vows. Both fall for each other, but Victor gets so nervous during his rehearsal that the priest cannot but postpone the event until he is "ready" to marry. Victor decides to practice by himself in an open stretch of land, and places the ring on what seems to be a root or twig sticking out from the ground. No later than he ring is on the supposed twig that it begins to twitch and out of the ground comes a spectral figure -- a woman, dressed in her wedding gown, dead but alive. Eyeballing the ring on her finger she believes she has gotten married to Victor and carries him to the land of the dead who introduce Victor to her people. At the same time, the Everglotts plan on having hapless Victoria marry another suitor who has plans and motives of his own and they don't quite include the words, "happily ever after" but do give new meaning to "to death us do part."
CORPSE BRIDE looks and feels very Gothic and cold throughout except when scenes over the ground shift to scenes in the Underworld. For a place that is about the dead, they sure have life: there are musical numbers speckled with life, bouncing creatures that in usual circumstances would be repugnant but under the animatronics reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen come across as lovable. The Corpse Bride herself, also known to the real world as Emily, is a woman who while dead and looking blue and on the verge of decomposition harbors great emotion and even when she desires to be married, can't bring herself to have Victor, a man who has his life before him, to the ultimate sacrifice for her. But because she is a ghost, and has unresolved issues that must be fulfilled, chance has given her this door to get back at the person who trumped her in the prime of life and may strike again.
It's a gorgeous movie, in any case. Short, concise, but rich in character development even when the depiction of the less sympathetic ones is a little broad. Children will be its core audience, and this is less dark a movie (despite the presence of death all around) than TIM BURTON'S NIGHTMARE BEFORE Christmas but as always by Burton, sure entertainment.