 |
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
|
|
 email this review to a friend
It's certainly taken Tim Burton long enough to return to his beloved field of stop-motion animation. For good reason, too; the animation in his new Corpse Bride is innovative, finely-detailed, and quite a bit better than that in any other previous stop-motion film, including the Burton-produced cult smash The Nightmare Before Christmas. Co-director Mike Johnson (who served as an assistant animator on Nightmare) and his group of approximately twenty other animators have done a great job of bringing Burton's characters, ideas, and crazy kooky fantasy settings to life. However, I must sadly admit, this does come at the expense of a richer, more layered storyline like the one found in Nightmare. Still, though, Corpse Bride remains a fun, bizzare, and definitely different treat. Having been taken from an old Jewish Ukranian folk tale, the story (set in Victorian England) is paper-thin, and what little of one there is concerns the marriage of two aristocrats, Victor Van Dort (the voice of Johnny Depp) and Victoria Everglot (the voice of Emily Watson). Victor's family is wealthy and renowned, though he himself is so nervous and shy that his wedding has had to be arranged in order for him not to screw it all up. Victoria's family used to be like Victor's, only now they find themselves crumbling into deep despair, and worse--deep debt. Her parents, the snooty Maudeline Everglot (the voice of Joanna Lumley) and the permanently frowning Finnis Everglot (the voice of Albert Finney), despise the Van Dorts but realize they have enough cash flow to get their family back into good graces. So, it is with a mingling of regret and anxiety that the two families come together on the day of the wedding. Unfortunately, there are no Victor/Victoria jokes. Victor actually gets a chance to meet Victoria before the rehearsal, and though he fidgets and blunders a bit, there is a spark there. However, once it comes time for rehearsal, he just cannot seem to learn his vows. Thus, the impatient Pastor Galswells ( the voice of Christopher Lee) sends him outside to practice them before the wedding. Victor goes off into a secluded spot in the woods, and finally manages to commit his vows to memory. So, for one final practice take, he slips the ring onto what he thinks is a mere twig jutting up from the ground...however, it is the skeletal ring finger of the otherworldly and very dead Corpse Bride (the voice of Helena Bonham Carter). When Victor recites his vows, he accidentally marries the Corpse Bride and is whisked away into the Land of the Dead...no, not the George A. Romero movie. Victor is initally frightened by the world's undead inhabitants, and the Corpse Bride is at a loss to explain how and why they've been married, because she thought he had done it all on purpose. Burton and Johnson's showing how the dead aren't nearly as dissimilar to the living as we may think, based on all of the zombie and vampire movies we've ever seen, provides most of the fuel for the movie. It is unfortunate that the movie does not maintain the energy of this concept for very long; the fish-out-water bit is old hat and a lot of the jokes are quite familiar. However, the characters are all given great personality and verve thanks to the actors voicing them. This doesn't mean that they're really all that complex or believable, but the actors have managed to allow the audience to unpainfully sidestep this roadblock. Johnny Depp, master of all kinds of voices and accents, pulls off another very convincing British one after his Oscar-nominated performance in 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Unfortunately, though, this is not one of those incredible show-stealing Depp turns such as the aforementioned Pirates, the recent horror flick Secret Window which was all but dead save for his energy, or his and Burton's bizarrely lovable summer collaboration, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In fact, he is easily trumped by Helena Bonham Carter--who, by the by, had a child by Burton and has been engaged to him since 2001--who manages to create the film's only truly fleshed-out character in the lovely Corpse Bride. The Corpse Bride is an immediately likable, hugely appealing character that keeps the movie alive, despite her being dead. Granted, Burton and Johnson have managed to equip the film with several rollicking roller coasters of hilarity (most of it musical), but without Carter lending her sympathetic and beautiful voice to the Corpse Bride, I doubt there would've been as much enjoyment to derive from the movie. In fact, the Peter Lorre-sounding maggot that pops out of her eye (voiced by Enn Reitel), surprisingly proves too much of a distraction. Another disappointment is that Danny Elfman's music is mostly routine, the same kind of stuff he's been putting out for the last twenty years. --Full review at REELPICKS.CJB.NET-- email this review to a friend
Comment on this Review:
 Subscribe to MatchFlick Movie Reviews through RSS |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
RSS | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | About MatchFlick® | Press | Contact Us | FAQs
Partnership and Advertising Opportunities | Movie Database | Merchandise ©2004-2009 MatchFlick®. All rights reserved. ©MOVIE IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT PROTECTED AND THE PROPERTY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS |