For once, the biggest marriage scandal in Hollywood is playing out on the big screen instead of in the tabloids. Britney may have gotten hitched on a drunken whim, and J.Lo is already up to hubby number three, but when it comes to marriage mishaps, Victor Van Dort trumps them all: accidental matrimony with a corpse.
Victor, (voiced by Johnny Depp), is an endearing but completely hopeless Victorian-era bachelor whose imminent nuptials give rise to more than just cold feet.
The film opens on Victor's tacky, "nouveau riche" parents poking and prodding the boy into meeting his betrothed - the heiress of an established aristocratic family - for the very first time. Nervous enough about the arranged marriage, Victor's anxieties are compounded when it turns out that he actually has romantic stirrings for his fianc?©?¬ Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson).
The fun starts when, during the wedding rehearsal, Victor botches his vows, lights his soon-to-be mother-in-law on fire, and flees in shame to the nearby forest, which just happens to be a portal to the land of the undead. Oblivious, Victor begins to practice his wedding oath aloud, only to wake the spirit of Emily, the so-called Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter). She erroneously believes that she is the object of Victor's vows.
Forget a raucous bachelor party; how is Victor supposed to explain this one to the missus?
"Corpse Bride's" strength does not lie in a fantastically original plot. The rest of the movie is a series of fairly predictable developments that involve uncovering the secret to the Corpse Bride's past, several conveniently timed magical interventions, and a hammy newcomer to upstage Victor as Victoria's lover.
Plot aside, however, "Corpse Bride" is a light but incredibly entertaining movie that appeals to almost every demographic. The basic fairytale premise is a lock for young'uns, while co-director Tim Burton's typically smart, dark, dry humor will keep older viewers hooked.
With each excursion to the Underworld, both Victor and audience are fascinated by the nuances of irony, innovation and imagination with which Burton depicts the afterlife.
The film, Depp and Burton's fifth pairing (second this year), is the director's first stop-motion animation flick since his cult classic "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993).
While some may applaud the recent departure of animated films from the traditional Disney "sing-along" genre, "Corpse Bride" resurrects the lost art of the animated musical with surprising success. Burton's longtime creative partner, Danny Elfman, composed a catchy, lyrically clever score mercifully unlike the horror that was the "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" soundtrack.
Although the cast of an animated feature usually goes without mention, one cannot ignore the star-studded roster of actors that Burton recruited for the film. Along with Depp, Carter and Watson, Tracey Ullman, Albert Finney and Elfman himself lend their voices to the characters of "Corpse Bride." When creating the onscreen incarnation, animators usually draw on the character's real-life counterpart for inspiration. Indeed, from the corpse bride's wide, doleful eyes to Mr. Everglot's (Finney) appreciable waistline, it was apparent that these faceless stars made a positive impression on the look and feel of the cast.
As with any successful animated film, the real star of "Corpse Bride" is the cutting edge technology used to create it. "Corpse Bride" is the first full-length stop-motion film to use Apple's Final Cut Pro 5, the fanciest new editing software on the market.
This begs the question, then, why didn't Burton go fully high-tech and render all of his images through CGI? After all, that would have been a heck of a lot easier than reposing those puppets every five seconds.
Chalk it up to Burton's trademark eccentricity, a snobbish pursuit of creative purity, or whatever else you like, but just be glad he didn't do it. Since 1995's "Toy Story," fully computer-rendered films have garnered success with critics and audiences alike, but as they proliferate, all CGI films start to look exactly alike: acid colors, smooth contours, and bulbous shapes.
"Corpse Bride," however, is an aesthetically marvelous mix of soft, somber tones and bold, jarring neons. The silicon-and-stainless-steel puppetry gives the film dimension, texture, and a grittiness that is way more accessible than the sterilized images of computer graphics.
So move over live-action, and hello, faithfully departed.
