The Shadow Of The Nightmare Before Christmas Looms Large Over Corpse Bride

The fact that Sweeney Todd and Big Fish exist in Tim Burton's 21st-century filmography is kind of astonishing when you look at the rest of the output he's produced over the past 16 years. Sweeney Todd and Big Fish are great, well-crafted films and the other stuff he's put out is....not. The very nadir of his career as a director has managed to arrive in the form of those absolutely abysmal Planet Of The Apes and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (the latter film being the first motion picture I distinctly remember seeing in a theater despising) remakes. So, in the realm of Tim Burton's 21st-century works, where exactly does his 2005 effort Corpse Bride (which he directed with Mike
Johnson) fall?

It's alright. It's a film that clearly wants to recreate the magic of the Tim Burton-produced 1993 motion picture The Nightmare Before Christmas. to the point where certain locations visually recall Halloween Town and there's even an undead doggie following the protagonist around. The more derivative nature of Corpse Bride means it lacks the individualistic spirit that made The Nightmare Before Christmas so compelling while its blatant desire to recapture the magic of that older film seems to come at the expense of actually giving any sort of depth to the characters in Corpse Bride.

The story, which is inspired from some sort of Russian folklore from the 1800's, starts out on the day that the ceaselessly clumsy Victor (Johnny Depp) is set to be wedded to Victoria (Emily Watson) in an arranged marriage. Despite growing some feelings for Victoria after meeting her, Victor can't help but leave a trail of chaos in his path during a wedding rehearsal. He quickly heads off for the woods where he recites his vows over and over again, just so he can get them right. Unfortunately, the one time he does get them right, he inadvertently ends up putting the ring on the finger of the dead body of Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), a woman whose love affair resulted in her death and has been hoping someone would come along and love her in years since.

Once the two get accidentally hitched, we meet the Land Of The Dead, where skeletons and dead bodies run around and party, while Victoria is being set up with the mysterious suitor Barkis Bittern (Richard E. Grant). It's a smart storytelling move to keep Corpse Bride short (the film runs only a little over 70 minutes before the credits start rolling) since it's doubtful this more simple narrative could keep running for even 5 minutes longer. Even in this more brief running time, things get padded out with some forgettable Danny Elfman musical numbers that don't do much in the way of advancing the plot or adding layers to the characters.

Something people tend to forget (maybe because the studio itself hasn't played up the movie much in their retrospective featurettes) is that this is a feature film from LAIKA, the studio behind films like Coraline and the recent classic Kubo And The Two Strings. The stop-motion animation here actually takes on an interesting context considering the films LAIKA has produced in the 11 years since Corpse Bride was released, since it feels at times like they're trying out newer stop-motion techniques here that would be perfect in their 2009 release Coraline, most notably in the facial expressions, which feel more stiff (Victoria, most notably, seems to have little emotional range in the way her face operates) than they would in later LAIKA efforts. That being said, there are some really gorgeously designed sets in this movie and the attention to detail in the costumes, backgrounds and the like make for a great showcase for the kind of artistry this medium of storytelling is capable of.

The two lead actors in Corpse Bride, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, turn out to be two of the strongest elements of the entire project, particularly the way Depp actually goes for a more subdued than usual performance that seems to be evoking a little bit of the yesteryear everyman Jimmy Stewart. What a nice change of pace from some of Depp's other 21st-century work that emphasizes quirkiness over actual depth. I wish Corpse Bride was able to create its own identity that granted its own sense of individual spirit and substance, but it's a handsomely made production that's diverting while it lasts. Hey, at least there's positive qualities attached to this feature-length pitch for Hot Topic merchandise, which is more than I can say for those Alice In Wonderland and Dark Shadows movies.