Review of Corpse Bride (2005) by Jennifer B — 02 Dec 2011

Take an imaginitive idea and a famed director and you get... underwhelmed. I don't know why exactly, but the story seemed so dirivative (and how often can you say that about a guy marrying a corpse by accident) - it just seemed like this tred on such time proven ground - very Dickensian in a sense... and in spite of the bizarre premise, everything went just about exactly as one would expect.

Musical numbers in stop motion animation... I guess that was original in 2005, but drawn animation had been doing that for decades. The first tune, something about things going exactly as planned, was clever, but the corpse bride bit of Tin Pan Alley just didn't do much.

Burton's direction was clever - nice use of camera angles and such, but the entire Victorian era above ground was shot in shades of grey which, while artistic, perhaps wasn't a good all around choice.

The voice acting - well what can you say... with the exception of Depp who seemed just too wimpy, the rest came up aces. It was wonderful to hear Joanna Lumley "Stoly-Boly" anyone?, and Albert Finney, and of course Tracey Ullman ad libbed some of the funnier little throwaway lines.

But that's the thing... the humor only existed in those throwaway lines - the rest was way too ernst and what little was written in didn't really work (like the constant complaining about the carriage driver coughing) - but I will say there was a nice touch when Christopher Lee (in a nice bit of casting as the overbearing Bishop) bellowed at the dead in his stentorian voice. One of the skeletons mutters "be quiet, we're in a church". I just wish there was more of this kind of levity; it would have helped.