A slightly stiff movie

Rating: 5/10 (19 November 2005)

Tim Burton's previous big animation offering, The Nightmare before Christmas, was a pleasant enough offering. I never really fell for it as much as some of his devotees did, but I enjoyed its gloomy charm and the songs were fun. I was expecting more of the same sort of thing with Corspe Bride, and it seems that I wasn't far off.
The story is about a young man, the son of a wealthy fishmonger, who is due to marry the daughter of an aristocratic, but poor, family. The wedding rehearsals are a disaster and, one thing leading to another as they often do in films, the poor chap ends up being married to a corpse. I know, it doesn't seem to make sense, but it does at the time, trust me. So, instead of spending his honeymoon relaxing with his new bride, planning their future together (and, presumably, trying to remove the smell of fish from the rental tuxedo), he is instead dragged into the netherworld. With hilarious consequences.
Except there aren't really any hilarious consequences at all. To be honest, it felt a little (if you pardon the pun) lifeless. Johnny Depp is fine, not to mention barely recognisable, as the English-accented groom, Victor. Helena Bohnam-Carter (who assures us she had to audition for her husband, Tim Burton. Yeah right) is perfectly acceptable as the zombie newlywed. But, weird premise aside, the film is a bit predictable. There are some nice songs (though not up to Nightmare Before Christmas standards) and some decent jokes involving body parts and decomposition, but the story pretty much follows the path you might expect from a standard "I married a dead chick" movie.
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