A Good Second Attempt

Rating: 6/10 (12 February 2007)

The setting is a 19th century cobblestone town, and the story begins with a hateful couple living in a ghastly mansion, once luxurious, but decrepit from years of dwindling funds. They intend to marry off their daughter Victoria (Emily Watson) to a rich family and restore their family's former glory. Thus, Victor (Johnny Depp) meets Victoria and love blooms. Clumsy with his vows, Victor wanders off into the forest only to accidentally marry a corpse (Helena Bonham Carter). Great fun ensues. A co-directorial effort by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson, The Corpse Bride draws various similarities to 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas due to the use of stop-motion animation and Burton's involvement in the creative process. These comparisons are unfortunate, as The Corpse Bride is a much different film altogether. The story and content is much more accessible to a wide audience, but it may be argued that the art and music lags slightly behind its spiritual predecessor.
Tim Burton is no newcomer to the stop-motion animated forum. Whilst Nightmare was directed by Henry Selick, Burton has had a long history of interest in this realm of animated film. As such, The Corpse Bride is the most perfected of the genre; a little piece of trivia floating around has indicated it took animators twenty-eight shots to make the character's blink. The careful attention to detail and intensity of the work of the animator's pays off in a big way; Corpse Bride is a fully immersive world where character's move smoothly and colors expertly blend together. Some of the character designs, especially in the world of the dead, are comedic: one such being General Bonesapart (Deep Roy), a skeletal image of the historic figure with a blade through his chest. Characters in the real world have accentuated features, such as a depressed face or baggy eyes, portraying the town as a tired place suffering from boredom.
Perhaps an error made with The Corpse Bride was in making it partly a musical as well. The combination worked expertly for Nightmare Before Christmas, which boasts some of the finest examples of animated themes in history. However, apart from a melodic and haunting tune from the Corpse Bride, the music never really engages in the film. Even the singing seemed muddled at parts, making it hard to follow along with the seemingly clever words. Having omitted the musical portions, the feature may have benefited from a few more scenes in the land of the dead, which never came to life quite as convincingly as Halloweentown. What is left are wonderfully composed piano pieces by Danny Elfman, and a hauntingly beautiful story that only Tim Burton could craft on screen. When viewers can feel pity for a rotting corpse with an eye that falls and uncovers a green maggot who talks, then that is quite a feat in itself. (7/10 Good)