Corpse Bride

Victor Van Dort (voice, Johnny Depp) is bumbling through the woods late one night, having just gone through a very harrowing experience — the rehearsal for his arranged wedding to Victoria Everglot (voice, Emily Watson), a young woman he’d never even met before that day. Fiddling with the gold band intended for his bride and muttering a few practice vows, he slips the ring onto the gnarled branch of a bramble bush… or so he thinks.

The branch is actually a bone. The left ring finger-bone of Emily (voice, Helena Bonham-Carter), a corpse bride who died in her wedding dress some years before and has been waiting in the Land of the Dead for someone to propose. While Victor wasn’t particularly keen on marrying Victoria, he’s even less taken by the idea of being forever wed to a molerding, partially skeletal corpse (albeit one who bears a striking resemblance Angelina Jolie — I guess she’s still stealing husbands in the afterlife) and residing a dark underworld populated by animate dead bodies in various states of decay.

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is a stop-motion animated musical much in the same tradition of his 1993 cult favorite The Nightmare Before Christmas (which he produced, but didn’t direct). Co-directed with Mike Johnson, and with original songs by Danny Elfman, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride definitely won’t disappoint fans of the trio (all of whom worked together on Nightmare).

The tongue-in-cheek gothy German Expressionist look and feel of the film are real eye-poppers. In fact, that’s a running gag throughout the proceedings: Emily’s eyeball falls out and bounces around more frequently than Captain Ron’s, thanks to her resident maggot (voice, Enn Reitel), obviously modeled on Peter Lorre, who always wants to pop out and pipe up. There are a lot of cockle-warming homages here: most notably a song-and-dance number by Bone-jangles (voice, Danny Elfman) that’s a dead ringer for Ub Werks’s Skeleton Frolic cartoon from the 1930s.

Despite the colorful characters and never-ending parties going on in the Land of the Dead, Victor is anxious to return to the colorless, joyless 19th century-styled Land of the Living. Emily, all dressed in tattered white, is determined to keep her new-found love with her. “Why go up there when people are dying to get down here?” wonders one character. Indeed, it won’t seem logical to lovers of horror and the quirkily morbid, but Victor is an upright, uptight, straight-laced young fellow who feels an obligation to his fiancée Victoria.

Meanwhile, the film switches back to the Land of the Living, where Victoria’s tightwad parents (voices, Joanna Lumley and Albert Finney) are ready to marry her off to the next available suitor (voice, Richard E. Grant) so as not to waste the wedding cake. Victoria is determined to find Victor, not believing that he left on his own accord. Victor’s mother and father (voices, Tracey Ullman and Paul Whitehouse) post “Have You Seen Me?” notices all around town, and wring their hands with a mix of worry and consternation.

The musical numbers range from endearing (Remains the Day) to annoying (According to Plan), and for me at least, there are thankfully few (five vocal songs, total). The animation and characters are really cute and actually quite memorable, in spite of the fact they’re not terribly developed (we never know why, exactly, Victor falls in love so quickly with both Victoria and Emily). The story is brisk and entertaining and there’s just enough gallows humor and skullduggery for perverse adults, while still maintaining an engaging experience that’s safe for very young kids.

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Review by Staci Layne Wilson

Read Horror.com's Interviews with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, Tim Burton, and Danny Elfman & Mike Johnson.