Happy Panic Productions

Roger, Ebert, I read you: Corpse Bride (2005)

(Warning: here be spoilers, though vague.)

Tim Burton's disdain for the establishment and embrace of the misfit is so well ingrained that apparently even he takes it for granted. In Corpse Bride, it's obvious that he finds the titular character the more attractive of Victor's romantic options. Yet he gives the audience no reason to believe that Victor would feel remotely likewise; she is given less personality than a one-eyed skeleton, and all of her character depth is conveyed by one marble-mouthed mediocrity of a song, delivered by a forgettable spider and maggot. In the end, it's clear Burton wasn't able to convince us because he never convinced himself. Contrary to his every instinct which we have come to know in the course of his career, he gives the groom to the living girl whom he loves no less arbitrarily than he briefly loved the corpse, having met them mere hours apart, for no better reason than falling back on the status quo that the living should marry the living. It is a shocking lack of imagination at work when this lifeless love triangle features one bride murdered and another whose murder is planned, yet the potential passage of the living bride through the mortal veil, thus rendering all distinction between the romantic rivals moot, is a concept never remotely considered by any party to the plot or its direction. I never thought I'd breathe the words, but for once, a movie should have taken a page from The Frighteners.

At least the film is gorgeous. It should excite folks to the possibilities of animation that doesn't come from a computer. The knockout sequence is when the Corpse Bride first rises from the grave. Her movement is in striking contrast to that of every character that we had seen thence, fluid and ethereal; her pursuit seems inescapable. Was her model filmed at a different frame rate and the image composited? I didn't notice the effect in the remainder of her scenes, when she interacts more physically with her environment.

And some of the character designs are excellent. Is it just me, or was the priest a spitting image of Old Man Winter from Santa Claus is Coming to Town?

But what does Ebert say?

This marriage, according to the rules of the netherworld, is a legitimate one.... I risk playing spoiler by revealing that, for once, Ebert doesn't play spoiler, but only at the expense of correctly describing this detail of the plot; or to be more specific, saying the opposite of the truth.

My own feeling is that the artificiality of stop-action animation adds a quality that standard animation lacks... In what way is “standard” animation not artificial? I guess he's referring to the movement of real, living creatures.

All of that is a lot for an animated fantasy to convey, but "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" not only conveys it, but does it, yes, charmingly. No! Charmingly?!? Of all the adverbs!