Great Film For the Halloween Season

Rating: 8/10 (15 October 2019)

Make no bones about it, "Corpse Bride" is a classic stop-animation classic that will appease to both kids and adults alike. The technicalities are at its finest and the film has the right amount of ghouls and goth that has been a symbolic trait for director Tim Burton. And sure Burton does have an abundance of creative contributions to the movie, "Corpse Bride" was mostly given the directorial duties to animation director Mike Johnson. The age demographic for this movie will likely be for the twenty-something goths who set the mood for themselves as they await the young kiddies as they approach your doorstep as they trick-or-teat for candy.
Although the animation is crisp and the voice performances are spectacular, it's hard to pinpoint if they're principal target is towards kids and young adults. The settings emanate in an unorthodox surreal eternally dark atmosphere where it's foggy most of the day and the bright moonlight comes out at night. Our leading protagonist is a young man named Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp) an introvert who lives with his overbearing rich parents Nell and William (Tracey Ullman and Paul Whitehouse). They had arranged for Victor to marry a charming young lady named Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson) whose aristocratic parents Maudeline and Finis (Joanna Lumley and Albert Finney) are now penniless.
The characters here all seem to have that eerie, pale-faced complexion to give them that look like they've spent their vacations in coffins. It's as though as if even the mortal characters look like corpses themselves before they get embalmed.
In spite of their morbid physiques, the main characters are as a whole mortals. Victor seems to be having cold feet about this fixed wedding as he wanders into the forest rehearsing about his wedding vows while he places the wedding ring on a tress branch where one of the twigs resembles a bony skeletal finger. Just like you would expect in a Gothic fable setting, from the Earth down below a corpse bride named Emily (Helena Bonham Carter) materializes complete with a disheveled ragged wedding gown has now become his wife. Victor finds himself in a predicament as to how he he can annul the marriage or if she was the person he was intended to marry all along.
Victor and Emily journey their way into the land down under (not Australia) and it appears that the world down below the graves have more life than in the land of mortals. In Burton's warped mind, the afterlife is one big party where the skeletons grooving to some jazz music hotter than the devil's complete with eyeballs eerily shifting going from one socket to another. Emily herself is kind of a character with problems keeping her eyes together. In addition to that, there is a maggot living inside her head and has a striking impersonation of Peter Lorre.
Everyone seems inclined to the Danse Macabre Lite score along with some haunting tunes by Danny Elfman that seem to have a creepy backdrop that's more played for laughs. The fun scenes occur between the rich Van Dorts and the poverty stricken Everglots as each clan has suspicions for one another. William as a fishmonger makes good claims that his abode is larger than that of his supposed in-laws and that it;s quite "chavvy".
There's plenty of scenes to get you into the Halloween spirit with all the jazzy skeletons,rotting flesh, and a severed head that serves drinks. There's a fine balance that this movie possesses between the humour and freights. After the much bright and cheery success of "Charlie and Chocolate Factory", Burton decided to counteract his next project to something darker and more eerie all with great panache.