Corpse Bride: Grade A

A

Corpse Bride

Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Director=Tim Burton

This is frame-by-frame animation, where individual photographs of hand- made puppets are streamed to create the movie. It looks good, maybe a tiny bit better than digital computer animations such as Toy Story or The Incredibles, because puppets look more fully rounded than CGI characters, even though their range of action is more limited. So this proves that the old style of animation is still viable. But you have to ask, So what? From the viewer’s perspective, CGI would have worked as well.

This story centers on an arranged marriage in a 19th century English village.Lots of cartoony gothic castles with spider webs and bats. Victor, the young man, accidentally enters the underworld and meets a remarkably fleshy dead woman among all the dancing and singing skeletons in the land of the dead. But finally, he returns to the land of the living for his true love. One disappointment is that it starts out as a musical, or perhaps even an opera, but after the skeletons do their vaudeville routine, the movie seems to forget that it started as a musical. Too bad. Most of the characters and sets are clichés, (except the Peter Lorre maggot!) but the script is sparkling, the voices totally convincing, and the animation is a feast for the eyes. Reviewed 2/11/06.