Corpse Bride

I don't know. There's nothing really wrong with Corpse Bride, but as a spiritual successor to The Nightmare Before Christmas, it falls a bit flat. It's the same idea; puppets star in a musical with horror elements layered over a family-friendly story. It makes it kind of a mystery who the movie's really for. The tone and sense of humor definitely seems geared towards kids, but I don't know how many parents would approve of all the macabre imagery. It kind of seems mostly to just be for Tim Burton fans. It turned a tidy little profit, but didn't gross nearly as much as a lot of family movies do.

Visually, it's really stunning. The huge puppets have special clockwork heads that are are adjusted with small keys, and the quality and subtlety of their facial expressions are amazing. Excluding scenes that feature liquid of some sort, if you didn't know about the movie you'd probably think it was animated with computers. It's the film part that isn't quite as good as Nightmare. The supporting characters are well done, but the main talent is wasted a bit. Yeah, Depp's doing the voice of the main character, but that doesn't make his performance intrinsically special. He says his lines, not particularly enthusiastically, and collects his paycheck. Carter is a bit better, although there's really no reason she had to be playing the part. Danny Elfman's songs are a definite step down from Nightmare's. That movie's songs were memorable, a quality Corpse Bride's lack. Competently composed, maybe, but I didn't love any of them.

The story itself is also oddly constructed. It's hard to tell where they're going with it for a while. There's some mildly funny humor, and the main characters are likable. The central conflict is a little more nuanced and intelligent that the typical kid movie, with both sides being sympathetic. It's a very short movie, probably because of the ungodly amount of time required to film everything, though it does finish with a suitably climactic, feel-good ending. Corpse Bride is a decent, likable movie. But it does seem a bit irrelevant.