The Corpse Bride Review
by Rick Ferguson (filmgeek65 AT hotmail DOT com)October 5th, 2005
How do I begin to describe the unnatural love I feel for THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS? From the moment I saw the Tim Burton-inspired, Henry Selick-directed, Danny Elfman-scored stop-motion Gothic extravaganza, I fell hard and fast. My wife and I bonded over it instantly; I got her a set of NIGHTMARE collectible figures on our first Christmas together. We watch it together every November- singing "This is Halloween" to each other and trading lines like "Did anybody remember to dredge the lake?" and "Interesting reaction!" into the wee hours and cracking ourselves up every time.
Okay, so we're a couple of dorks. But given the pedestal upon which NIGHTMARE rests in the Mr. Fabulous pantheon of cinematic wet dreams, how could I hope for anything less from CORPSE BRIDE, the latest Tim Burton-inspired, John August-written, Danny Elfman-scored stop-motion Gothic extravaganza? Given the demented geniuses behind it, the obviously brilliant character and set design that give it life and the sublimely simple premise that underlies it, I expected nothing less than to give my heart away all over again.
Alas- it was not to be. While CORPSE BRIDE is indeed a feast for the eyes, the overall effect is rather that of seeing a dearly departed relative in an open casket funeral. Aunt Mabel sure looks great, but all the protean skills of the mortician can't hide the truth- she's really nothing more than a stiff in a box.
The story, based on a Russian folk tale, is set in an unnamed 19th Century European village and concerns the travails of one Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp), a gaunt, hollow-eyed Ichabod Crane type who's about to walk down the aisle with Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson), a gaunt, hollow-eyed young beauty whom he barely knows. Victoria's parents, penniless bluebloods Maudeline and Finnis (Joanna Lumley and Albert Finney), have arranged the marriage in the belief that Victor's nouveau-riche fishmonger parents Nell and William (Tracey Ullman and Paul Whitehouse) are wealthy enough that the union will secure their financial future.
But Victor's cold feet send him fleeing from the rehearsal and into the forest, where he practices his vows and sets the wedding ring on a boney tree limb. But the limb is actually the hand of Emily, the titular Corpse Bride, who was murdered by her fiancée and buried in an unmarked grave. The Bride rises from the netherworld, takes Victor as her husband and starts bossing him around just like a real wife. Can Victor untangle himself from this unholy union in time to marry Victoria before her unscrupulous new suitor Barkis Bittern (Richard E. Grant) gets his hands on her dowry?
I mean, come on-what a setup. This material is right in the wheelhouse of Messieurs Burton, Elfman and August, and this picture should have been a mammoth, towering moon-shot. So why is it ultimately a dying quail? Baseball metaphors aside, it becomes obvious soon after the clever and economical opening musical number that the picture is poised to disappoint.
But before I get to the problems, allow me to accentuate the positive. In visceral terms, this picture is nearly the equal of NIGHTMARE. We owe Burton and company a debt of gratitude for (along with "Wallace and Gromit's" Nick Park) keeping the delicate, perfectionist art of stop-motion animation alive in an age in which Disney unceremoniously kicked their entire hand-drawn animation department out into the street. As Pixar has shown us, computer animation has no equal when exercised in the service of brilliant storytelling. But does the future of animation belong solely to computer jockeys? Good God, I certainly hope not. The stop-motion animation in NIGHTMARE and BRIDE conveys a mystical, otherworldly fairy-tale vibe that the polished sheen of pixel rendering could never hope to duplicate. The visual world of this film, from the grotesque Charles Addams-inspired characters to the Fritz Lang homage of the sets and backdrops, ravishes the eyeballs to the point that they need a cigarette afterwards.
But am I alone in thinking that a lot of this picture looks- dare I say it- phoned in? The characters, fore and aft, lack the inspired imagination of the NIGHTMARE cast. My favorite NIGHTMARE character is the Mayor of Halloween Town- he of the portly mechanistic pulchritude, with his head spinning around between Comedy and Tragedy masks depending on his mood. Where in Corpse Bride is his equivalent? The characters here are tossed-off, half-imagined and bloodless. Likewise, Danny Elfman's original songs are tuneless curios with mostly unintelligible lyrics- where his work in NIGHTMARE was operatic in scope, approaching the level of Gilbert and Sullivan, here the music is perfunctory at best. Meanwhile, the script delivers the bare minimum of what's required to tell the story, and no more.
So what happened? I dunno. Lord knows these guys are busy, what with CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY coming out the same year. But it seems to me- and this is just unfounded speculation on my part- that the creative team stopped thinking about these characters after casting stars in the voice parts. Back in the old Disney days, animated voice artists were unknowns in the Mel Blanc mold- guys like Winnie the Pooh's Sterling Holliday and John Fiedler or THE JUNGLE BOOK's Phil Harris and Sebastian Cabot. These guys were accomplished voice actors who served their characters. But these days, Hollywood stars have taken over, and you get the likes of Brad Pitt voicing Sinbad and Cameron Diaz voicing SHREK's Princess Fiona- actors for whom these gigs just serve as pocket money. It's not enough to cast Depp, Watson and Bonham Carter as the leads in this movie; you have to give them the tools to lift the characters off the screen and into our hearts. But these are three pretty dull creations. That doesn't bode well for collectible sales, guys.
But listen, I'm not going to bash this picture. I liked it okay; I just didn't love it. I'm still glad it was made. I hope it does well enough that more pictures like it get made. It may actually play better with the kids, who will love the skeletal dogs and the headless French waiter and the talking maggots that pop out of eye sockets, and won't ask for anything more. I may never feel for this picture the gut-wrenching love I felt for THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, but that's okay. We can still be friends.
***
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
