'Corpse Bride' mixes merriment and melancholy
by Eleanor Ringel Gillespie

Death becomes Tim Burton. It did in "Beetlejuice" and in "Big Fish" and now in "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" (as opposed to "Sally Field's Corpse Bride"?). A tenderly macabre and beguilingly romantic tale of love beyond the grave vs. love above ground, the movie is rendered in stop-motion animation along the lines of Burton's earlier "The Nightmare Before Christmas." Only now, the painstaking technique, which can take eight hours for two seconds of film, has been occasionally beefed up with CGI. Read the full review

TO SUM UP
In this stop-motion, animated feature, a young man is accidentally married to a mysterious Corpse Bride and whisked away to the underworld, while his real fiance waits bereft in the land of the living. But nothing in this world or the next can keep him away from his one true love.

FILM FACTS ...
Warner Brothers Pictures
'Corpse Bride'

Directors: Mike Johnson, Tim Burton
Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Tracey Ullman, Paul Whitehouse, Albert Finney, Christopher Lee, Deep Roy
Run time: 74 minutes
Release date: Sept. 23, 2005
Rating: PG for some scary images and action, and brief mild language.
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Corpse Bride slide shows
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Official movie site
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READ THE REVIEW

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: B+
"The movie is a bit betwixt and between — whimsical but eerie, funny but melancholy."

Austin American-Statesman: 3 of 5 stars
"The tale itself is simple and pleasantly fablelike, but the screenplay is surprisingly, um, lifeless."

Dayton Daily News: B+
"Like its decayed heroine, Corpse Bride is ravishing, with a surprisingly warm heart."

Middletown Journal: B
"Fairly or unfairly, the new movie can only pale in comparison to The Nightmare Before Christmas..."

The Palm Beach Post: A-
"I leave it to parents and child psychologists to decide whether all of this will disturb young minds, but grown-ups are likely to enjoy the flurry of otherworldly puns and marriage jokes."


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