Gather round, all you dark romance, clay animation fans! Tim Burton is back again with a hard-hitting Victorian love story that is fun for the whole family!
Corpse Bride, arguably a rip-off of Burton’s 1993 The Nightmare Before Christmas, is actually anything but. Burton, teamed with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, has once again found a way to incorporate comedy, fantasy, and a little bit of a sappy love story into this production.
When Victor Van Dort (Depp) first meets his betrothed fiancée Victoria Everglot, he is nervous and unsure of what’s to come. Upon laying eyes on her, he falls childishly in love. Taking into account his nervous feelings toward Victoria, and his possible inability to be a good husband, clumsy Victor seems to set everything off on the wrong foot. While attending the rehearsal ceremony, Victor somehow accidentally sets his stern future mother-in-law on fire, erasing any marks of a good first impression. Embarrassed and unsure of himself, Victor flees the town, and finds himself cozy amid a forest in which the town cemetery lies. He decides to practice his wedding vows, eagerly awaiting his scheduled wedding the following day. Upon reciting the vows in practice, and proposing to what is mistaken for a dead tree, Victor finds himself wed to a beautiful young bride who is neither alive, nor dead.
In his absence from the town in which he is to wed, a mysterious stranger appears and offers to take the young Ms. Everglot’s hand in marriage in the place of Victor. What is to come of the infatuated lovers who are separated by a thin veil that is the land of the living and the dead? Perhaps the secrets of the corpse bride’s past will come back to haunt the present.
The duration of the movie takes place in two different sceneries: the dull, ashen and depressing Victorian land of the living, and the bright, joyfully colorful world of the dead. The contrast between the two lands is interesting, simply because of most people’s take on death being a bad and depressing event. Burton takes the positive side of a sad thing and makes it exciting and joyous. The movie reminds us that there really were a few eras at one point in time or another in which death may as well have been an outlet to everyday reality. The corpse bride’s experience as a once living person, although she suffers from a broken heart, is a much happier one than when she was alive.
Depp and Burton will forever be a morbidly dynamic duo, exciting the likes of a wide range of fans. The bizarre story is yet another one of Burton’s masterpieces, and will forever be cherished, as NBC has, although it will never take its place.
In any case, you definitely want to fork out the ten bucks to check out this flick! It’ll make you feel all warm and tingly inside, if nothing else.
