2008 Woodie Awards
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride will make bells ring
New film uses stop-motion animation but fails to surpass the director's classic Nightmare Before Christmas
Tyler Ruggeri
Issue date: 9/22/05 Section: Arts and Entertainment
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Putting the director's name in the film's title is proof positive that his style is now a marketable, branded entity (though he shares helming credit here with Mike Johnson). After making such distinctive oddities as Beetlejuice and Pee-Wee's Big Adventure in the late '80s, Burton got the assignment for the pitch-black surrealistic Batman, which became a commercial smash.
Burton has been teetering between personal projects and monstrously budgeted studio pictures, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, released this past July, ever since.
Even though Burton's visions are expensive to realize, studios like him because his movies are distinctive enough to give audiences a break from the similarity and form that dictate most summer blockbusters. The irony, however, is that Burton's style has become so revered that it is now mainstream. With Charlie and now Corpse Bride, Burton has become a homogeneous, if no less entertaining, version of himself.
Corpse Bride is an extremely diverting and visually stunning film, but it is no Nightmare Before Christmas. Like its title character, it is an otherworldly creation of fantasy and wonder, but it is lacking a heart.
Unlike Nightmare, which was a gleeful send-up of holiday cheer, Corpse Bride is a somber, gothic tale, with some sections so gray and gloomy they could have been created in black and white.
The film tells the story of Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp), a befuddled young man betrothed to marry the beautiful Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson). But one night in the woods, he accidentally awakens the Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter), who believes that he is her one true love arriving to join her in the netherworld. Complications arise and Victoria's nearly destitute parents try to find a wealthier suitor to wed their daughter.
The look of Corpse Bride is its most arresting element. From lavish sets to the storybook-from-hell design of the whole picture, it is a marvel to behold much in the same way Nightmare was. When Victor descends to the underground with the Corpse Bride, the bizarrely twisted architecture of the real world gives way to a colorful, rowdy jazz bar presided over by Bonejangles, a skeleton voiced by frequent Burton collaborator Danny Elfman, who also wrote the score and songs.
The songs are jaunty and clever, as is Elfman's specialty, but not nearly as memorable as his Nightmare compositions. There are also few of them-hardly enough to qualify the film as a musical but present enough to add some kick. Moreover, one of them, "The Wedding Song," in which the dead prepare for the Corpse Bride's nuptials, is strikingly similar to Nightmare's "Making Christmas."
Elfman is supported by the leading vocal talents, Depp and Carter, who are regular players in Burton's troupe (the latter is also married to the director). Paul Whitehouse, Joanna Lumley, Albert Finney and Tracey Ullman are effortless comic relief as the two sets of parents. There is even a cameo by Christopher Lee, the British horror star who made appearances in Burton's Sleepy Hollow and Charlie. Also, keep an eye out for one of the sandworms from Beetlejuice.
Corpse Bride knows how smart and fanciful it is, and thus makes the joy of discovery less exciting for the audience. Like the stately Victorian landscape of Victor's world, it is strangely unemotional. When Victor gets pulled into the Corpse Bride's den of severed heads and rattling bones, the story comes to life, creating a fun experience, but nothing euphoric-alluring but never enlightening.
Burton's latest Frankenstein-like creation, stitched together from pieces of his whirling psyche, is worthwhile and a must for anyone who professes to be even a passing Burton fan.
His kinetic artistry remains unparalleled and there probably will not be another stop-motion animated feature until Burton makes one. While Corpse Bride is at times disappointingly unexceptional, it does have a certain tone of distinction, however familiar that tone may now be.