Corpse Bride (2005)

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride has a dark premise, but the colorful characters, visuals, and sweet love story bring the film to life.

Both Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp) and Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson), the woman he is betrothed to yet has never met, are nervous about their pending nuptials.  Victor is so jittery that he cannot even make it through the rehearsal without a few mishaps.  He decides to retreat to the woods to practice his vows when he mistakenly slips a ring on the finger of the Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter).  She immediately falls in love with him, but her problem lies in the fact that he’s from the land of the living while her place is in the land of the dead. He, on the other hand, can think of nothing but getting back to his living and breathing bride-to-be.

Corpse Bride is a visually stunning piece of filmmaking.  Knowing that every precise movement is done by hand makes it easy for one to appreciate even the simplest everyday occurrences that take place. From the chopping of fish to the galloping of a horse, everything looks every bit as real as any animated film and even some live action films.  That is probably the goal of most stop-motion animators.  The animation never distracts from the story and only adds to the overall product. 

The plot on the other hand is confusing at times. Victor seems to change his mind about which woman he loves at a whim. There is no clear point at which he falls out of love with one, and into love with the other.  While that added to the mystery of the story’s ending, it makes it nonetheless hard to believe.  The storyline also keeps from being original by borrowing a commonly used theme.  Victoria longs to marry a man that she loves, but her once rich parents insist she marry into a family with money to save them from the poor house.  It’s hard to feel sorry for a girl who is so easily manipulated by her parents, not once, but twice within the same story.  Once her parents discover Victor has married the Corpse Bride, they set her up with a seemingly wealthy visitor.  She doesn’t bother to run away or even protest very much.  The two indecisive lovers turn out to really be a good match after all. 

The actor’s voices are also a perfect match for the characters they depict, but many of the performances lack the quality that makes them memorable.  Depp portrays the shy and fumbling Victor with ease.  It’s not a far stretch from other characters he has played in the past for Burton, such as Edward Scissorhands. He’s likeable enough, and the understated performance works in his case because that seems to be what is required of his character. Watson is passive and quiet in her role, but is also completely forgettable.  Her voice is hardly recognizable, and would be easily replaced.  Helena Bonham Carter has a distinctive voice, and brings an emotion to the title character that makes her full of life and worthy of sympathy. When her former lover bellows “can a heart still break if its stopped beating,” it’s hard not to have a tear to shed for the Corpse Bride who embodies sadness in every word she speaks.

As a simplistic story, Corpse Bride is easily enjoyable and entertaining to watch.  It’s not hard to get beyond the minor confusing plot points and enjoy the journey the characters have in both the underworld and the living world.  The action moves at a steady pace, and most of the comedic points are well-placed with the exception of the overused maggot that occasionally pops out of the Corpse Bride’s eye socket to quip annoying, trite little phrases such as “you’ve got something on your mind and it’s not just me,” or other similarly distracting and unfunny lines.

As a musical however, there are a few small problems. The songs range from depressing, sad and monotone in “According to Plan” and “Tears to Shed,” but change to upbeat and catchy with “Remains of the Day” and “The Wedding Song,” all written and scored by Danny Elfman. Unfortunately it’s hard to hear and understand a lot of the lyrics.  They seem muffled and under-emphasized behind the instruments and other musical enhancements, especially in “Remains.”  One of the most fun things about musicals is the ability to sing along, and not being able to make note of perhaps the best writing in the film is a bit depressing. What would The Lion King be without “Hakuna Matata” or Aladdin without “Friend Like Me?” I can’t even begin to imagine. It's those songs that make the film interactive for the audience. In the case of Corpse Bride, it may have been better to leave out the songs with unintelligible lyrics all together.

Final

Overall Corpse Bride is a good film, with the potential to really tug at the heartstrings. The animation is praiseworthy, but a few of the musical numbers leave something to be desired.  Certainly Bride will get compared to Burton ’s other stop-motion film, The Nightmare Before Christmas, which achieved a kind of cult-following throughout the years.  I’d venture to say Corpse Bride stands on its own two feet as an impressive film with a few notable flaws, but nothing that would keep an audience from embracing it and saying “I do.”