Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride exhibits the masterful blend of fun and macabre that we’ve come to expect from this director. Created with stop-motion animation in the vein of 1993’s Burton-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas, the film is both visually stunning and charmingly spooky.
Burton has chosen once again to work with his fiancee Helena Bonham Carter, who provides the voice for the Corpse Bride herself, and Johnny Depp, who voices the protagonist Victor. The film is set in a small village in Victorian-era Europe, and tells the story of Victor and Victoria, a sweet young couple who, despite their dreadfully shallow, scheming parents and their arranged marriage, have fallen for one another. On the eve of their wedding, Victor wanders into a forest while practicing his vows, whereupon he inadvertently awakens the Corpse Bride. He then finds himself married and dragged down to the underworld, where, it seems, every day is a party for the dead.
If you couldn’t tell from the previews, this movie looks beautiful. The character models, done in Burton’s signature style, are what really make it come alive. Possessing an incredible degree of expressiveness and some absurdly-proportioned features, each model is a piece of eye candy. All the “living” characters and the world they inhabit are viewed in hues of pale grey and blue while the dead and the underworld explode with color, underscoring the theme throughout the film that the dead are the ones who are truly alive.
While the living characters, aside from Victor and Victoria, are stale and miserable (if hilarious), motivated only by selfishness and greed, the dead are happy and genuine. They welcome Victor with open arms by singing, dancing and getting wasted. A motley assortment of corpses, skeletons and creepy crawlers (like a spider seamstress and a worm who lives in the Bride’s head), their hijinks are simultaneously clever and silly, horrific and endearing.
The Corpse Bride is fantastic. Despite her rotting flesh, she dances across the screen with grace, elegance, beauty and even sensuality.
Corpse Bride is a musical, and, as usual, Burton has chosen master composer Danny Elfman to do the score. But unlike the duo’s work in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, here the songs serve to advance, rather than disrupt, the flow of the story. Other notable performances include the deliciously evil Lord Barkis, who strikes a pose every time he enters the frame, and grumpy Pastor Galswells, voiced by Christopher Lee, both of whom ensure that the movie is laugh-out-loud funny the whole way through.
Certain segments do invoke Burton’s earlier work (the scene where the dead invade Victoria’s dining room is almost a direct homage to Beetlejuice), but none feel rehashed. The 77-minute running time keeps things short and sweet, ending the film when it ought to instead of stringing the audience along for an extra half hour. Through his effortless integration of humor, horror and his own trademark visual style, Tim Burton has triumphed once again with this incredibly satisfying picture.
