Corpse Bride

If you have not yet seen the film, there may be some spoilers in here for you!  
If need be I gladly take your eyes for you

Corpse Bride; the third stop animation film with Tim Burton’s name stamped on it. To tell it straight, it wasn’t actually the film that I was hoping, or rather expecting for that matter. Much like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I must say that I was not that impressed.

Directed by Tim Burton- of whose work I believe is continually dropping in standard, -Pee Wee’s Big Adventure being one of my favourites- Starring Johnny Depp (Victor Van Dort), Helena Bonham Carter (Corpse Bride), Emily Watson (Victoria Everglot), and way too many people to mention, sorry but with such a film, there were way too many characters, so I have accounted for the three main roles.

Like I mention a thousand times in this review, I liked the story. The two young people, Victoria (Watson) and Victor (Depp) are arranged to be married; without previously meeting each other. With Victor not particularly good at ‘the whole marriage thing’ he freaks and runs from a rehearsal and mistakenly marries the corpse bride (Bonham Carter) who was killed by her original husband for her money.
As you can guess the two are unable to stay married, and as it turns out Victor is announced as running off with another woman. Wherein Barkis Bittern (Richard E. Grant) steps in and replaces Victor and attempts to marry Victoria believing that her family is rich. I will not spoil the whole film though… so watch it, its only 76mins long.

In comment to the actors... the voice acting was pretty good, being a big fan of video games I am used to awful voice acting. The voice acting was nice with a host of famousy people, both American and English its always great trying to recognise peoples voices. Gotta say though, my favourite person in the whole film had to be Victoria, simply because you can’t not like Emily Watson, she’s just so innocent (and she has been to me ever since Punch Drunk Love).

The screenplay was pretty standard Burton, some funny lines, and funny occurrences, alongside a nice story. Not much else to say, Burton can be good at telling a story.

I must say, that similar to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there are only snippets of the film that I can say I actually enjoyed. First off, I liked the story itself (I heard it was based on some old story), and I enjoyed the scene in the pub. Other than the overall look of the film, nothing else surpassed me as great. I felt the animation was handled really well, with some nice cinematography and some pretty models the film looked nice, and perhaps if muted to a degree the film would have been a lot better.

As for bad points- Seeing as they wanted to make the film a musical; which I believe was not needed at all. This was because, in my opinion there was only one half decent song (in the weird underworld pub/bar thing with the dancing skeletons). But I felt that unlike the Nightmare Before Christmas –which is an enjoyable film- that every song was unnecessary, and I do not put it down to my hearing (because I have the ears of a rabbit), but I could not hear a word of what they were singing about, it was all just simply incomprehenable (made up word).
It also seemed a little long –and seeing as it was only 76mins long, which must be bad!

Overall it was an ok film, nowhere near the spectacle of the Nightmare Before Christmas but some nice stop animation; a good change from the overly-made CGI films produced. It’d be fun for maybe children, or die-hard Burton fans…

Cptalbertwesker Rating – 6 /10

Like I mentioned it was not the film that I had expected. The crowds of people (about 3 besides us) were the only present at the screening towards the end of its run at our cinema. It was ok, but like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I am not anticipating its release.