Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride
reviewed by Pamela Moye
Tim Burton continues to reign as the master of the delightfully macabre. The Corpse Bride is a tale of love, death, more love, more death, murder, and sweet revenge. It’s your typical arranged marriage tale- boy meets girl, reluctantly; boy and girl actually fall in love; boy accidentally ends up engaged to the partially rotted remains of a lovely, lonely lady.
Victor (voice by Burton film regular, Johnny Depp) is a milquetoast of a man from a bourgeois fish-monger family. Victoria is mousy, yet beneath this soft exterior lies sterner stuff type from a titled, yet broke family. When the two meet the night before their arranged marriage to practice the vows, both are relieved to find they are attracted to each other. Victor just can’t quite seem to make it through the mock vows without making a mockery of the situation. After fleeing the chapel in shame, he finds himself proposing to random bits of woodland roughage. Placing the ring on a particularly digit-esque twig reanimates the remains of a decomposing beauty and Victor finds himself snared into potentially fulfilling a contract of unholy matrimony. As the tale of the corpse bride- who was done wrong by her love in the worse possible way- unfolds, Victor finds himself sympathetic toward her and his inadvertent betrothal, while yearning for Victoria. Meanwhile Victoria is fending off a “more suitable” suitor. As the love triangle tightens, the truth is revealed, and a climax more morbid than most animated fare is reached.
In itself, the story is enjoyable, slightly predictable, but twisted. The mood is heightened by Burton’s use of color and whimsically gruesome imagery, as well as Danny Elfman”s soundtrack. The standout tune is “The Remains of the Days” a swingin’ ode to the afterlife.
Overall, two bony thumbs up.
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