Could've Been A Contender...

Rating: 7/10 (26 September 2005)

Corpse Bride had the potential to be truly a wonderful, heart wrenching tale, but wound up just too short and undeveloped to make it happen. The movie cries out for another chapter and sadly we are denied. With a running time of 75 minutes though there isn't any room for substantial development which is unfortunate.
The character Emily had so much heart and her one contribution musically had some nice lyrics, though overall I found the songs lacking other then the piano piece which was terrific but doled out in too few increments.
CB lacked the cuteness, the wit, the humor and charisma of Nightmare Before Christmas, and the potential in glimpses we get here and there are merely teases in a movie that ends up feeling like a mismanaged script, rushed out the door with too little clothes on.
The ending was also rushed and the butterfly sequence not as strong as it could have been if we were given more time to fall in love with Emily. She had potential and we do get those glimpses like I said, but too few and far between.
The beginning starts off rather cliché, but at midpoint picks up in a story twist that is fantastic if you didn't know it was coming, worth watching but I felt more tantalized then gratified.