Funny, whimsical story using puppet animation.

Rating: Null/10 (13 March 2006)

I was a bit disappointed, only because of the publicity this little film received. I was expecting something better. But taken as it is, this is a pleasant, rather short animated fable. In the "extras" we see that small sets and puppets are used for the animation, and it is done very well. It therefore has more of a "3-D" look than we see in computer animation like Shrek or Monsters Inc. Another interesting feature is the coloration. In the "alive" world the colors are very muted and dark, almost black and white. But in the "dead" world things are very colorful and bright. It makes an interesting way to contrast the two, so that death doesn't seem depressing at all.
The story is very simple. A marriage is arranged, the intended meet for the first time the day before their wedding. The groom is very shy, and is having trouble saying his lines, which MUST be recited just so for the marriage to be valid. So he goes off by himself into the woods to practice. This environment is suitable, he says the lines perfectly, and slips the ring on a twig as practice. But the "twig" turns out to be the protruding skeletal hand of a young woman who was killed on the eve of her wedding, and was still dressed in wedding garb. So, the movie deals with the complications of this young man accidentally gaining a "corpse bride."
SPOILERS FOLLOW. The dead world considers his marriage to the corpse legitimate and there he meets lots of other dead people, plus his old pet puppy. But he longs for his real intended bride, so they find someone who cooks up a potion to get them back to the alive world. Complications arise but at the climax the young man is about to drink poison so that he can become dead to make the marriage to the corpse legitimate. But the corpse realizes that he really belongs with his alive intended bride, she stops him, and all ends well.