Tim Burton Just Doing the Same Old Thing Again

Rating: 5/10 (11 October 2005)

I saw this movie in the theater with my wife. There were at least 2 other movies I would have rather seen. She loved it, but me, well, I didn't hate it, but I didn't exactly like it either. It just seemed like a conglomeration of most of Burton's earlier works. People call Tim Burton a genius. He is talented at repackaging the same thing over and over, and getting lots of money for it, I guess. He's definitely NOT a genius. People keep comparing this to Nightmare, and rightly so. It came from Tim Burton, was claymation, and was about animated dead people. It did remind me a lot of BeetleJuice also. Dancing skeletons seem to be a popular motif in his movies. I guess what bugged me the most were the characters. They completely lacked depth, except for maybe the main character, yet her back story was sorely underdeveloped. WAS she killed by her groom to be, or a stranger? WHY was she killed? Was the bad guy who tried to wed Victoria the groom to be of the corpse bride AND her killer? Why did he want to kill Victoria so badly? It doesn't really matter. Another reviewer was nitpicking the plot of this movie, saying things like "How does the corpse bride know all of the dead people if she was under a tree all of the time?" I started to wonder, then thought, "The movie is about animated DEAD people! It's fantasy! On a good note, the animation was well done, but in 2005 that's no big feat.