TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE

By: Abbie Bernstein
Review Date: Friday, September 16, 2005

While not a sequel in narrative terms, TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE feels somewhat of a piece with 1993's TIM BURTON'S THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. For one thing, it's the same sort of satisfyingly solid-looking stop-motion animation style. For another, it's in the same spirit, with the Land of the Dead here a slightly more benign but still colorfully gruesome (within PG limits) incarnation of the earlier movie's Halloweentown. With Burton's distinctive creative stamp and Danny Elfman's equally specific musical score, CORPSE should bring joy to everyone who loved NIGHTMARE and will likely win new fans as well.

We're in Victorian England, where the aptly-named Victor (voiced by Johnny Depp) and Victoria (voiced by Emily Watson) have been betrothed by their parents without ever meeting. Victor's parents, the wealthy Mr. and Mrs. Van Dort (Paul Whitehouse and Tracey Ullman), want upward mobility and the snooty, titled but penniless Lord and Lady Everglot (Albert Finney and Joanna Lumley) want an infusion of cash. Against all odds, it's love at first sight for the shy and kind pair of intendeds, but Victor is so disastrously awkward at the wedding rehearsal that he retreats to the forest to practice saying his vows. Alone, Victor finally performs his half of the ceremony perfectly and finds that he's married a very lively corpse, Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), who thinks Victor is her own true love come at last to be with her ever after. She whisks Victor off to the Land of the Dead, which is actually a lot more fun (at least, from our point of view) than Victor's world but he's not actually dead yet, and there's Victoria to consider ...

Although the storyline heavily features the living dead (and is based in many respects on an old, grim folk tale), the mood of CORPSE BRIDE couldn't be sweeter. Depp, Carter and Watson all provide charming, immediately likable voices for their characters, and there's a sense of real warmth and camaraderie as well as boisterousness in the Underworld. The pale brown and gray Victorian Land of the Living looks like a series of Edward Gorey illustrations made dimensional, and the contrastingly vivid Land of the Dead is a sort of joyous, blacklight-bright realm where even the eye-socket-inhabiting maggots are cute and compassionate.

The screenplay by John August and Caroline Thompson and Pamela Pettler, based on characters created by Burton and Carlos Grangel, is structured perfectly, with a superb balance between plot-driving action and character turns, augmented by Elfman's ditties. When Emily laments the fact that Victor seems to prefer his living beloved, she has a ballad about it, loyally backed by her maggot and a friendly black widow spider.

The direction by Mike Johnson and Burton is fluid and witty each detail is thought out without being overbearing, and the choreography in one big production number is just close enough to "live" to be exceptionally funny.

TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE is the perfect Halloween treat playfully spooky, beautiful in its way and utterly fun.