Tim Burton has long established himself as one of the most innovative creative forces in Hollywood, and in The Corpse Bride this shines through more than ever. It’s a stop-motion production and the puppets and sets are fantastic. In one of the featurettes Burton explains that the medium seemed perfect for this idea, and I can’t imagine any other method capturing the mood of this movie as well.

Plot-wise, Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp) has a problem. His neuvo-rich parents (voiced by Paul Whitehouse and Tracey Ullman) want him to marry into the aristocracy, to a young woman named Victoria (Emily Watson). She is naturally rather nervous about this too, as the pair have never met. However her land-rich, money-poor parents (Albert Finney and Joanna Lumley) insist on it, so it will be done. After meeting for a short while, Victor and Victoria decide that maybe they could love each other. However after a disastrous wedding rehearsal presided over by the rather nasty Pastor Galswells (Christopher Lee), Victor is wandering alone and disconsolate. His sorrow is interrupted when, while practicing his vows, he inadvertently finds himself married to The Corpse Bride herself (Helena Bonham Carter) - now he has a big problem. Escaping her clutches won’t be easy, but after a while his horror turns to a fondness for this woman whom fate struck a terrible blow against…

There are a great cast of other larger-than-life characters, each brilliantly represented by their extraordinarily expressive puppets and great voice acting. These include Richard E Grant as Barkis Bittern, who plans to marry Victoria himself, Michael Gough as Elder Gutnecht, and the wonderfully named Bone jangles (jazz fans will understand that one), voiced by Danny Elfman, who also wrote the superb musical score for The Corpse Bride. Jane Horrocks also voices a couple of characters. The underworld is not a drab and miserable place in this film - rather, it is vibrant, colourful, all social standing and prejudices forgotten, everyone loves jazz and can sing and dance. One interesting decision for this movie was to make the land of the living rather drab and miserable - social prejudices are reinforced at every turn by the two sets of parents - and make the underworld a wild, colour-filled place. While not in black and white or sepia, the land of the living has a distinct lack of colour - almost entirely made up of greyscales but having occasional glints of colour. This highly stylised approach gives each world a lease of life and personality of its own - and that’s not even taking into account the characters within those worlds!

There is a constant stream of humour in terms of dialogue, expressions and sometimes slapstick, and there are some truly wonderful and quite memorable songs. The story runs along nicely and everything ties in perfectly, and what could have been perhaps something of a horror story (it’s rated PG for some scary images and action, and brief mild language) is turned into something undeniably sweet though with a cynical edge to it. The visual appeal of the film never wanes and some of the scenes are truly spectacular. Tim Burton’s creation is wildly inventive but has its own undeniable internal logic, and everything makes perfect sense somehow. Whichever way you look at it, The Corpse Bride is a wonderfully entertaining movie. (Okay, I can find one thing about it that I wasn’t impressed with - one of the main plot twists was very obvious, but it didn’t stop this from being a fantastic movie!)

Perhaps you need to be just a little bit twisted to fully enjoy this movie… but c’mon, who isn’t just a little twisted, eh? Actually I was a little surprised to see that some people gave this a low rating… perhaps they aren’t twisted enough - or perhaps too much? Admittedly the complaints of it being predictable and rather short (74 minutes) are justified, but for me neither thing was really a problem when I was enjoying it so much.


DVD Extras

Amazingly enough, I even liked the DVD extras as well. This has the sort of extra features that I enjoy - a series of short featurettes that explain different features of how the film was made. To the point and no waffle, but very interesting. Danny Elfman describing how he composed the score was very enlightening, as were the features on how the stop-motion animation is actually done and how the puppets, sets and props were made. The voice-acting and overall vision of Tim Burton, and how he keeps creative control over every aspect of the film’s production, are also examined. There are a few scenes that can be viewed side-by-side with the storyboards too.

Full feature list:

- Inside the Two Worlds
- Danny Elfman Interprets the Two Worlds
- The Animators : The Breath of Life
- Tim Burton: Dark vs. Light
- Voices From the Underworld
- Making Puppets Tick
- The Corpse Bride Production Galleries
- Theatrical Trailer
- Music-Only Track


Overall, The Corpse Bride is a great film, and for once the DVD extras actually do add value. Recommended very, very highly!


Other Information

Co-directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson

It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film (lost out to Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I liked that movie but I liked The Corpse Bride even more!

It won the Saturn Award for Best Animated Film and won / was nominated for a number of other awards.


Quotes

Old Woman: Alfred? Oh! You've been dead 15 years!
Alfred the Skeleton: Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!

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Town Crier: In other news... *the dead walk the earth*!

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Maggot: If I hadn't just been sitting in it, I would say that you'd lost your mind!

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Victor Van Dort: Please, there's been a mistake. I'm not dead.

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Maggot: You don't know me, but I used to live in your dead mother.

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Bonejangles: I love a woman with meat on her bones!

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Victor Van Dort: Please, there's been a mistake. I'm not dead.

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Maudeline Everglot: Oh, Finis. Who invited these people? They must be from your side of the family. (This is said, of course, about the dead then roaming around the place!…)

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So… off to redo my Top Ten Movies of 2005 to include this one.


If you're interested in stop-motion animation, you may enjoy my essay on Claymation

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD