Tim Burton’s work will probably never be described as banal or ordinary; rather, he is merely the poster child of inventive, creative cinematic storytelling. Corpse Bride is told using stop-action animation, but using more-advanced methods than those in Burton’s legendary The Nightmare before Christmas.
Victor (Johnny Depp) is a shy, clumsy groom to be who has trouble saying his vows during the wedding rehearsal. After flubbing his lines once too many times, he dashes into the Victorian night and practices them while walking along an icy, moonlit path. After Victor places the wedding ring on a nearby branch and recites his vows, a figure rises from the frozen ground – a corpse bride!
The Bride (Helena Bonham Carter) thinks she’s found her true love in Victor, and she spirits him to the Land of the Dead, populated by myriad dancing and talking skeletons. But Victor doesn’t love The Bride and pines for his own lost bride, Victoria (Emily Watson). Complicating matters further is that their marriage was to be one of convenience, as Victoria’s family needs the money that Victor’s family might bring.
The movie has many eye-popping (ha!) visuals, including the Bride’s own eyeball, which seems to pop out every so often, and the sheathing and unsheathing of a long sword buried in the back of a skeleton made to resemble Napoleon Bonaparte (known as Bonesaparte in the credits). Wonderful musical numbers abound as well, featuring the beautiful voice of Danny Elfman – especially a complex jazz/scat number.
It’s really tough to find fault with any of the voices, which feature a number of former Burton collaborators, such as Depp, Elfman, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, and even Deep Roy, who played the Oompa Loompahs in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Although this film was up for a Best Animated Feature Oscar, don’t think for a moment that your three-year-old is going to like it, musical numbers or not. The tone isn’t as dark as Nightmare before Christmas, but the settings sure are. I mean, the movie takes place mostly at night, either in a dark forest, inside a dark, stark mansion, or the Land of the Dead. Not exactly the place you might find pastels and a lava lamp.
Watching Corpse Bride, it’s easy to forget it’s not animated in the traditional way, or even the nouveau-artiste, computer way. Fourteen puppets of the Bride and of Victor were used in the making of this movie, and some 109,000 individual frames were filmed. The attention to detail is preposterously exquisite and should leave the average viewer properly dumbfounded.
Corpse Bride: ***
