Corpse Bride (2005)

In Europe and Russia during the Middle Ages, and even into the Renaissance, Jews were considered so detestable by some that great effort was taken to bring about the end of the Jewish race. Often, when it was learned that a young Jewish couple were to be married, ruffians would hide in the woods along the road, and then ambush and kill the young bride before she could reach the wedding site, thus ensuring that the "Jewish pigs" would not produce any "Jewish piglets."

This sad state of affairs forms the seed for Corpse Bride, Tim Burton’s second foray into feature-length stop-motion animation. Much of the historical horror of the events has been removed, including the anti-Semitism, and reworked into a rather charming little tale that is not nearly as creepy as the true stories from which it grew.

The Van Dorts come from the lower class, the proletariat, and they have recently come into a great deal of money. The Everglots come from a long line of noble landowners but have recently been rendered penniless. Neither family is really sitting pretty, which is why the arranged marriage between their children, Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp) and Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson), works out well for the two families. United, they will both have the money and the social status they long for. And so it is off to the wedding rehearsal. The only trouble is that Victor and Victoria have never met.

The shy, timid Victor stumbles over his prescribed vows, and the frustrated priest orders him to leave until he can recite his vows perfectly. Victor retreats to the woods beyond the town to practice in solitude. There, while reciting his lines, he practices placing Victoria’s wedding ring on a stick. But it’s not a stick, it’s a finger bone protruding from the ground. Having been proposed to, a female corpse (Helena Bonham Carter) in full wedding attire rises from the burial mound and accepts Victor’s proposal.

Now Victor must wrestle with how to tell Victoria that he accidentally married a corpse, and how to get out of that marriage so he can marry Victoria, as well as wrestling with conflicting feelings within himself. After all, his new bride is lovely and charming, if a trifle transparent in parts.

Tim Burton is clearly most comfortable and creative when dealing with death (which is a character trait that has me not quite sure I ever want to meet the man in person). While his films are always a treat to watch, there is an unbridled vivacity that comes pouring out in projects like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, and Corpse Bride that would be out of place in works like Big Fish and Edward Scissorhands.

In fact, Corpse Bride has me a little surprised at Burton’s sheer creative capacity. I was predisposed to assume that we would see similar imagery from The Nightmare Before Christmas, at least where the various underworld ghouls were concerned. But while Burton’s artistic style is obvious, the creatures we encounter are all new, including a maggot who is the reincarnation of Peter Lorre, a dead military officer who can split in two, and a host of skeletons with undershot jaws who sing jazz numbers.

Burton incorporates an interesting use of color. The world of the living is represented as grey, pallid, overcast, and otherwise dismal. There is precious little that is not found on a standard grey scale, and even the flesh tones are extremely pale. It is the underworld that is shot full of vibrant colors, giving it a great deal of life. It is a treat to the eyes, but it does serve to undercut one of the main points of the story that I shall not divulge.

Burton has formed something of a repertory company through the course of his films. Here he brings back Johnny Depp (Ed Wood), Helena Bonham Carter (Planet of the Apes), Albert Finney (Big Fish), Christopher Lee (Sleepy Hollow), Michael Gough (Batman), and Deep Roy (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) to voice many of the characters, even fashioning some of the puppets to look similar to the performers. Rounding out the cast are Emily Watson (Red Dragon), Joanna Lumley (Ella Enchanted), and Tracey Ullman (I Love You to Death). Danny Elfman gets to do another voice but not to the extent that he filled half the dialogue track in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Incredibly, there are still more big names in the cast list, but to include them here would get tedious. Enjoy reading the credits after the film.

Stop motion techniques have apparently improved, which can be good or bad. The movement of the characters is sometimes amazing in its fluid gracefulness. On the other hand, the comparatively coarse animation work on The Nightmare Before Christmas was part of its charm. But either way, the stop motion look is fascinating. I wouldn’t want every film to look like this, but I am glad people like Burton continue to use this particular art form. Variety is nice, and just because filmmakers can produce anything they want with computer animation doesn’t mean they should. The look and movement created by adjusting physical puppets frame by frame is part of the appeal of Corpse Bride.

The film is weak in a few areas. At least, weaker than The Nightmare Before Christmas. The story itself is not one of Burton’s strongest. Perhaps the screenwriting triumvirate of John August (Big Fish), Pamela Pettler (Monster House), and Caroline Thompson (Edward Scissorhands) proved to be one cook too many. (Or maybe it was because Pettler’s previous credits include the phrase "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" too many times to be good for any writer’s health.)

Whatever the cause, the script is thin and the reasoning flimsy. I don’t mean the fantasy elements or even the supernatural premise – those are quite fun, and Burton comes up with ideas I could not have conceived in my lifetime. I mean the reasoning behind which bride Vincent finally chooses. We are fed a long list of reasons why he should choose Bride X, but like some fool on Let’s Make a Deal he chooses Bride Y despite there being almost no rational reason for it, at least as far as a movie dealing with talking maggots and bearded skeletons can handle rational reasoning.

Additionally, not a lot really happens in the movie at all. It is basically six sequences; and while there is no screenwriting law demanding a higher number, it still doesn’t feel filled out. Oh, it feels better than watching a movie that is illegitimately filled out just to reach ninety minutes, like Dennis the Menace or Home Alone, but it’s akin to being short one bottle of champagne at the wedding reception.

Apparently I found the music and songs to be more enjoyable than most. A common complaint I’ve heard is that the songs don’t measure up to Elfman’s work on The Nightmare Before Christmas or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I really can’t say how anybody thought Elfman’s rendering of the Oompa-Loompa songs were good (even when we were lucky enough to understand the lyrics through all the computer manipulation of Elfman’s multi-layered voice). Corpse Bride easily outshines them. Like The Nightmare Before Christmas, the songs are more of an operatic nature, not concerned as much with rhyming or maintaining a verse-and-chorus structure as with telling what they need to tell. There are fewer songs in Corpse Bride, and I agree they are not quite as catchy or memorable as The Nightmare Before Christmas, but I still find them delightful.

If I have an actual complaint against this film, it is the title. Ever since Bram Stoker’s Dracula, there has been a perplexing trend to include the author’s or creator’s name in the title itself, as if we might forget that it is William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as opposed to, oh, Quentin Tarantino’s. Do we really need to be reminded that it is Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride? Could anyone else have conceived this whacked-out little adventure? It’s a pet peeve of mine, and I’ve vented, so I’ll wrap up now.

Final

Corpse Bride (Tim Burton’s, by the way) as a whole will probably always remain in the shadow of The Nightmare Before Christmas, and that’s probably where it belongs. It is not quite as witty, not quite as clever, not quite as ground-breaking or pivotal in cinematic history. But I do recommend it as a visual treat, a sweet little folk tale, and general good fun all around. Look for it in your video store soon. It’ll be under "T" for Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.