Film Reviews

Corpse Bride

• Rating:
• Director: Tim Burton
• Starring: Albert Finney
• Details: US/UK / 77 mins / (PG)

Just when you thought you'd seen this year's Tim Burton movie, along comes another - a stop motion animation film similar in style to The Nightmare Before Christmas. Victor van Dort (Depp) and Victoria Everglot (Watson), son and daughter respectively of new money and threadbare aristocracy, are to be wed in a marriage of convenience.
Happily they fall in love at first sight but everything goes terribly wrong at the wedding rehearsal when Victor fluffs his lines, drops the ring and burns his prospective mother in law's dress. Then, while practicing his vows in the woods he is pulled down into the nether world when a murdered bride takes him at his word. Into the gap beside Victoria at the altar rail steps wily Lord Barkis...
A fairytale for the ghoulishly minded, The Corpse Bride has many if not all of the hallmarks of Burton's storytelling. There are musical numbers, terrible puns, skeletons, body parts, a maggot that speaks like Peter Lorre, and a dead pet dog called Scraps who nearly steals the film. Most of the voice talent characterisation is brilliant, particularly Bonham Carter in the title role, Grant as Barkis, Lee as the Pastor, and Ullman, Whitehouse, Lumley and Finney as the Van Dort and Everglot parents. The weakness, if there is one, is Depp's light, sketchy voice characterisation of Victor, as if Wonka had too great a hold on him.

Review by Ted Sheehy