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This month I shall take a break from reviewing atrocious martial arts films and instead let you know about an enjoyable movie currently in the theaters. That movie, as indicated in the title of this review, is "The Corpse Bride," the latest Tim Burton/Johnny Depp/Danny Elfman collaboration.
Allow me to say that from the very first moment I saw the trailer for this movie on QuickTime, I wanted to see it. Although not really a full-fledged Goth, I do have some rather Gothic tendancies, and it's not without reason that I have a button reading "Plays well with dead things" on my game bag. The combination of Victorian fashion, the walking dead, stop-motion animation, and talented voice actors (and actresses) was more than I could resist.
Finally, in September, the long wait was over and I convinced my husband that we should see it on opening weekend (a rarity for us, we hate movie theater crowds). As luck would have it, our mid-afternoon matinee was only half full, although that audience largely consisted of obnoxious people, including the child who kept kicking my seat (and I never got the chance to turn around and tell him or her to stop, because I didn't want to miss even a moment of glorious stop-motion mayhem) and the couple directly in front of us who stood up at the end of the movie - only to stand there watching the credits! By all means, stay until the very end of the credits; but please, please, stay in your seat!
As for the movie itself, it was highly enjoyable. Not without its flaws, but well worth matinee movie ticket prices. Fans of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" will definitely enjoy "The Corpse Bride." Although the imagery is not quite so bizarre as in that earlier movie, you can still see the same influences in the character designs and the way they move.
The best reason to see this movie is for the animation and voice talent. Now, I am a great fan of computer animation, but I really feel that the stop motion visuals probably suited this movie much better than CG would have. Honestly, I'm growing tired of CG, as it's being overused and doesn't seem to be improving much at all. "Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within" looks much better than the CG movies being made now, and that was done several years ago.
There are a few sequences where the movement of the stop motion puppets used here is jarringly unnatural, but that's just a few rare seconds here and there. There were also a few characters that I thought were too cartoonishly bizarre, especially in their hairstyles, but overall I loved the character design, especially for the titular character. You'll probably never see a prettier zombie.
Although I am somewhat saddened to see most voice-acting jobs going to Hollywood actors instead of traditional voice actors, the actors here really contributed a lot to the movie. I especially loved Christopher Lee in his small part as the town priest.
To briefly touch upon the flaws of the movie, they are as follows: firstly, with a running time of only 78 minutes, "The Corpse Bride" feels far too short, especially if you're paying full movie ticket prices. We were out of the 12:40 showing by 2pm, after sitting through 4 deplorable trailers (OK, so the Harry Potter trailer had some sweet effects, but I'm not a fan of the boy wizard and his friends. Sorry).
Secondly, most of the musical number felt forced, as if someone said "Well, I suppose we should have a song here." Now admittedly, I have never liked musicals, but at least in some movies, the story seems to flow into the song and then back to story again easily. "Nightmare Before Christmas" wasn't too bad with the musical numbers.
Part of the problem is that the generic Victorian village that the movies living characters inhabit is so drab, its people so normal (despite some weird hair and freakishly large chins) that it's had to accept them suddenly breaking into song about anything. The song numbers in the underworld work better, mainly because you can accept that these bizarre characters might indeed launch into song and dance.
However, while the first song in the underworld is catchy, it's also extremely anachronistic and doesn't fit in with the rest of the movie. Don't get me wrong - I loved all of the skeleton musicians and dancers, but this was the only anachronism in the movie and it just didn't work. It stands fine on its own, however, and is probably the best song on the soundtrack. The song that fits in the best is the wedding song, and that, too, was an enjoyable sequence.
For those of you who haven't already read reviews in other publications, I'll give a brief synopsis of the story. Basically, it's a traditional love triangle story, with the only twist being that one point of the triangle is dead. The poor fool caught in the middle of the two lovely ladies does his best to do right by both of them. There's also the incredibly transparent plot about the murder of the poor Corpse Bride. That's it. Nothing epic, just a nice Gothic love story.
Full of dead people.
Seriously. I loved the various dead people in this movie. "The Corpse Bride" is gleefully macabre. If this movie had been live action, it probably would have received an R rating unless it removed a couple of the more gruesome characters. Easily disturbed children will probably be scared by this movie, but those who enjoy Goosebumps (do kids still read those? They were all the rage 10-15 years ago) will just laugh at the "gore."
The usual talking animal sidekicks found in Disney animated movies are here replaced by a maggot, a black widow spider, and a skeletal dog (he doesn't talk, but damn he's cute!). That should give you a pretty good idea of the sort of film this is, in case the title didn't clue you in.
All in all, I'd say that "The Corpse Bride" is the perfect date movie for Goths, or a good choice for the whole family, if your clan bears more resemblance to The Addams Family than Full House.
"The Corpse Bride" is rated PG for animated violence and tons of dead people.
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