I do not know Tim Burton (in high school one of my classmates claimed his aunt dated him). I do know that he has a highly developed personal aesthetic. He has attuned his entire career to this gothy, morbid, cheerfully gross affect. Most of his movies look like his brand of weird.
Buy Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride 4K UHDAnd it is probably hard to argue his greatest stamp on popular culture is The Nightmare Before Christmas. It has become an enormous brand. It has probably made Disney billions (little of which, I imagine, has come to Mr. Burton). Like I said, I do not know him, but I can guess for such a director of such a distinct imagination, it might rankle a bit that his signature pop-culture phenomenon… was not directed by him.
Henry Selick directed The Nightmare Before Christmas. He was an accomplished stop-motion director and knew how to get through the insanely arduous process. Burton has the vision; Selick had the skills and the know-how.
So, in my mind, Corpse Bride was Burton’s attempt to do another Nightmare Before Christmas, only with his name on the director’s slate. Co-director, because again he needed an experienced stop-motion director doing the day to day, which he found in Mike Johnson.
The story of Corpse Bride is, essentially, a ghost story. Victor (Johnny Depp), who comes from low-class fishmongers who struck it rich, is to marry Victoria, from a high-class family that has prestige, but no cash. Both dread the union, until they meet each other. They strike up a spark, but because Victor hasn’t memorized the vows, the rehearsal is a shambles. He goes off into the woods, does them perfectly… and accidentally marries a ghost.
This is a wonderful setup for a story, and (with some hiccups) seems to be heading in the right direction… but the film trips itself up again and again. Because it never, for an instant, creates a single understandable character. Victor is… nice. I guess. There are hints that he’s a naturalist, but he doesn’t pin down butterflies, he lets them go.
Victoria is pretty… and that’s it. She likes Victor’s piano playing, but that’s not a personality. When Victor accidentally proposes to the Corpse Bride, Emily (Helena Bonham Carter)… she’s blue. And sad. And that’s about all we learn about her.
Victor’s parents are ugly rich. Victoria’s are snobbish and poor. A Lord arrives who is lordly and conceited. After the unfortunate proposal, Victor is whisked to the land of the dead. Which looks a lot like the land of the living, but with dead people of mostly indifferent design.
The film has a similar aesthetic to Nightmare, though instead of the gooshy-gooey rotted pumpkin look of that film, it’s more reminiscent of the austere pen-and-ink grotesqueries of Edward Gorey. It isn’t as fluid as that film. In four years, Coraline (directed by Selick) would come out and a new degree of fluidity and grace would be brought to the stop-motion film. I love Coraline, but all of the Laika films after (ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, etc.) are so smooth they might as well be CGI.
Corpse Bride isn’t smooth. The images on screen look like puppets and dolls brought to life. For some, that might be a drawback, but for me it’s an absolute bonus. I love the stiff-armed and stiff-legged movements. The unnatural, full torso shifting and bizarre flapping of stiff faces. It’s like a vision into another world.
And it’s such a disappointment that this elaborately designed world, which took so much work to make and bring to life, is so routinely let down by the other creative elements. Even at its slim 77 minutes, time could have been taken to set up Victor and Victoria’s characters. They have no desires, no dreams, nothing but reluctance to marry that vanishes the instant they meet each other. The Corpse Bride is a jilted rich girl, murdered for her money. And that’s all we ever learn about her.
Corpse Bride is a musical, though, and songs are an unparalleled vehicle for uncovering the heart beneath a character. There are four songs in the film. Three are essentially worthless exposition. “The Wedding Song” is near a blatant rip-off of “Making Christmas” from Nightmare but with negative charm and is so cacophonous I was practically covering my ears. The one emotional song’s entire content could be summarized thus: “I am sad.” There’s a reason people are still releasing cover albums of Nightmare Before Christmas songs, and almost anyone reading this couldn’t name a single song from Corpse Bride.
I love stop-motion animation and was excited when I first saw Corpse Bride many years ago. My disappointment in this odd, wan, anemic and inchoate story was deep. For this review, it’s only the second time I’d seen the film, and I was surprised by how much (despite the terrible opening song) I liked the first ten minutes. It felt like there were missing scenes properly establishing any characters, but the aesthetic is so amazing and the voice work so good I thought I hadn’t appreciated it properly beforehand. Then the story unfolded, and its contradictions, mediocre motivations, and just plain stupidities beat appreciation out of me.
It’s lovely to look at. This 4K presentation looks flawless. It’s a movie of extremes, with half of the film almost in black and white and the scenes in the underworld in vivid (though always austere) colors. If you’re a fan of this film, this is an incredibly beautiful release.
But I’m not a fan. I’d hoped to revise my impression of it, but rewatching just reinforced by negativity. It has many good ideas, and some good scenes. What it lacks is the foundation of good characters and motivations. Everything is either caricatured or limp and weak. I can barely recall a movie I wanted to like more that I’ve enjoyed less.
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride has been released on 4K UHD by Warner Brothers. The release includes a single 4K UHD disc and a digital code. Video extras on the disc include “Digging Up the Past: The Minds Behind Corpse Bride” (9 min) about the development of the movie, “‘Til Death Do Us Art: A Corpse Bride Reflection” about is production, “Inside the Two Worlds of the Corpse Bride” (4 min) which compares the worlds of the living with the dead, “Making Puppets Tick” (7 min) about stop-motion animation, “The Animators: The Breath of Life” (7 min) more about animation, “The Corpse Bride Pre-Production Galleries” (14 min), a collection of storyboards, “Tim Burton: Dark vs. Light” (4 min) praising the director, “Voices from the Underworld” (6 min), about the actors, and “The Voices Behind the Voice” (8 min), which compares the live-action actors to their stop-motion puppets.
