Movie Review: The Corpse Bride
Directed by Tim Burton
Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Christopher Lee


For some, twelve years has been far too long a time between Burton's foray into this film style, considering how easy it was to fall in love with his vivid and distinct storytelling in this unconventional medium. I think it is safe to say that this movie will not disappoint the loyal fan.

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is a stylized follow-up to 1993's blockbuster the Nightmare Before Christmas, a film that was praised not only for the beautiful and creative visual style that blended traditional stop-motion animation with CGI to create a visually vivid world, but also for it's clever and inventive storyline.

Virtually no element of Nightmare's recipe was touched for the Bride. This new film is complete with all of the ghoulish, spidery-legged, outlandish colored, obtusely shaped characters that became instantly associated with Nightmare. Tim Burton has a certain penchant for a romanticized vision of the after-life. Or at least an affinity for making us feel slightly ill at ease with his vision of this life. (Think Edward Scissorhands or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.)
His trademark style is amongst the most distinctive in Hollywood, and it is a project such as this where Burton is able to stretch his creative muscles exactly the way he wants to; in a time and place where you are not held to any laws of nature or physics.
Right from the first frame you are enraptured by the visual style. Even more amazing to think is that these are actual three-dimensional puppets that are pain-stakingly photographed to create such a fluid movement of character.

The most interesting thing for me to talk about here are the creative concepts behind each character. If a character is evil in the film, every part of the puppet from his eyelids to his toenails tells us about his character. Extremes in height and width - all of contributes to giving us information about the character. In this limitless universe, Tim Burton is able to stretch things beyond the point of reality, stressing certain attributes of different characters, leaving less to be accomplished by the script and actors.

The acting in this film is quite decent. Of course Johnny Depp is so absorbed into a role that you wouldn't even recognize his voice, which I rarely ever thought about. (When I did, it was to remind myself that it was Johnny Depp's voice I was hearing, even if I didn't recognize it.) Helena Bonham Carter does a beautiful job, but again I realize how little work was left for the actors to do after the world was already built at the hands of the puppeteers.

My greatest complaint with this film lies with the story itself. The plot is rather uncreative and unimaginative. Chances are Burton and co. are planning that we'll spend so much time looking at the images, that we won't notice much else. But if you do notice the story, you'll notice a pretty straight-foward plot that ends up feeling rather obvious and worn-out. The beauty of Nightmare Before Christmas was that its plot was incredibly imaginative and creative. Compared to this, Bride ends up feeling incredibly unoriginal.

I would rate this film 3 and a half out of 5.

T.