Review of Corpse Bride

Corpse Bride (dir. Tim Burton, Mike Johnson. 2005)

Tim Burton is known for making quirky, darkly humorous films. Some are heavier on the quirky portion: like Pee Wee Herman’s Big Adventure and Big Fish. While others are more ensconced in dark humor: like his Batman films, Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd. Corpse Bride fits somewhere in between: It’s definitely dark, considering the plot and the tone the film sets within it’s animated world. But it’s not sinister in any way (few of his movies are) and has a cheeky feel to it that both embraces the dark elements, while injecting an anachronistic humor into them.

The story is of a young man named Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp), whose parents have arranged for him to marry Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson). Her parents have only agreed to the marriage to this young man of “new money” because their own fortune has waned and they’ll soon find themselves in the poor house. They are dismissive of Victoria’s nervousness and concern for love (“What does love have to do with marriage?”) citing that this is likely the only way they have of becoming wealthy again and what she wants doesn’t matter.

Victor and Victoria meet each other for the first time just before the wedding rehearsal, where Victoria peeks in on Victor playing the piano. They timidly fall for each other before they are interrupted by Victoria’s parents. During the rehearsal, Victor falls nervous and is unable to speak his lines, he fumbles the wedding ceremony and is chastised by Pastor Galswells (Christopher Lee). Victor goes to the nearby woods where he practices his lines, becoming more confident and more smitten with Victoria as he does. When he finishes the last line he thrusts the wedding band, which he had fumbled and dropped during the rehearsal, confidently onto what appears to be an extended branch. The branch turns out to be bony hand of Emily, or the Corpse Bride. She accepts his vows and takes him to the underworld where the dead reside.

The film follows some fairly standard tropes from there: Victor tries to get back, and manages to return long enough to speak to Victoria before being whisked away to the underworld again by Emily. Victoria’s parents arrange a new marriage to the sinister Barkis Bittern (Richard E. Grant), who originally appears during the wedding rehearsal and looks so sinister as to only be lacking a neon sign around his neck stating that he’s actually the villain. Victor resigns himself to stay with Emily agreeing to make their marriage official. The underworld returns to the surface to perform their wedding ceremony, which will kill Victor in the end after drinking a poisoned wine. During the ceremony Emily realizes that Victor and Victoria belong together and refuses to go through with it stopping Victor from drinking the wine. Barkis crashes the party and it’s revealed that he killed Emily years ago for her dowry and that’s what he intended to do to Victoria until he found out her family was penniless. He ends up drinking the wine while mocking Emily and dying, being pulled into the underworld by the other dead for his punishment.

I am mixed about this film. It’s definitely a children’s film, and should be taken as such, though the themes are more mature though in many ways cliched. The overall tone of the film, the notion of love at first sight, and love despite being forced into the marriage predominate. As do the ideas of willful misunderstanding. Individually all the pieces are that make up the film are good: the voice acting is solid. The animation is fantastic! The music by Danny Elfman is great.

However the movie hovers between a musical and nonmusical, and that’s one of those things that bug me. At first blush, it seems like a musical, the opening song gives it that drive you’d expect, but then another musical number doesn’t happen for some time. In total the film only has four musical numbers. I am not opposed to musicals, and in fact find myself occasionally enjoying them. I can’t help but feel the sort of limbo between musical and nonmusical this movie finds itself in ultimately weakens it. The songs that are there are good and I honestly think it would have been better served as a full fledged musical. Overall it comes across as a half-hearted attempt and just falls flat.

My other issue is with the plot. It’s just not remarkable. I know it’s based on a Russian folktale and is ostensibly a children’s film. Neither fact has any bearing on my thoughts of the plot. I suppose the cliched themes metioned above may have something to do with my issues, but over all just don’t find it that engaging. I think it could have been better served by being a television film or as I stated above, being turned into a full fledged musical. The cliched themes would have fit better, and the musical numbers would have helped keep my attention focussed.

Now with that being said, you may get the impression that I disliked this movie. That is not the case; I actually do like it, it’s just not as memorable as some of Tim Burton’s other work (both written and directed). If you are a fan of animated movies you should absolutely watch this (if you haven’t already). And if you’re a collector of such films then it’s definitely one you should have.