Having thoroughly enjoyed Tim Burton’s vision in ’Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, I was eager to see the other film released by him this year, the ’Corpse Bride’ which also contained most of the principal cast from Charlie ...
The story of the Corpse Bride is very simplistic. The Van Dort’s are nouveau riche fish-mongers who have arranged a marriage of convenience between their son Victor (voice of Johnny Depp) and the daughter Victoria (voice of Emily Watson) of Lord and Lady Everglot. The Everglots hate being associated with the tradesmen but their empty coffers have forced them to take this hideous step. Victor is a shy, inept artistic young man and similary Victoria is also shy and withdrawn and both are drawn irresistibly towards each other on the night of their first meeting.
While practising his marriage vows one night, Victor unwittingly places the ring on the hand of the Corpse Bride (voice of Helena Bonham Carter), who jumps at the chance to be married, transporting the hapless Victor to the underworld. Victor must now choose between his two brides and also find a way to get back to the Land of the Living even while the sinister Lord Barkiss (voice of Richard E. Grant) has designs of marrying the helpless Victoria.
The animation used in this movie is stop-motion animation (? :) and the figures were actually modelled using puppets (most of them wickedly caricatured). This style of animation gave the movie a really slick, stylish feel which coupled with Tim Burton’s cinematic vision (think ’Sleepy Hollow’) made a real pleasure to watch. The most appealing thing is the way the two worlds are depicted - the land of the living is monochromatic, dull, very foreboding while the instant Victor is transported to the land of the dead the frames are filled with splashes of color and colorful characters - General Bonesapart (voice of Deep Roy), a talkative maggot (inspired by Peter Lorre :) and compassionate black widow spider, skeletons dancing, skulls changing heads for no reason, eyeballs popping out and everything that the animators could have fun with dealing with the themes of death and the macabre.
Johnny Depp and Helena BC do wonderfully as the voices of Victor and the Corpse Bride repectively. Depp especially brings the bumbling Victor to life effortlessly. The movie is interspersed with wonderful songs, which reminded me of the Oompa-loompa’s songs in ’Charlie ...’, with very tongue-in-cheek humour but also serving the purpose of telling the character’s stories. The story of the Corpse Bride is especially well-told. Other than that, the movie has a lot of little jokes, playing on the word ’dead’ for instance, ’dead right’ and so on and other cinematic references like ’Frankly, my dear, ...’ which the younger audience will not get.
Having said that, I dont think this is a movie suitable for very young kids. A lot of the movie has skeletons and people dying and as entertaining as it was for me to watch, I heard more than one child in the audience crying. Also it didnt seem to hold the attention of some kids too well, there were plenty of kids who lost interest in the movie mid-way and started fidgeting or running around the movie hall .... which didnt really make for a very pleasant movie-going experience, so I must have really enjoyed the movie to still have liked it :D
Overall, I would say this would make a great DVD watch.