 | |
List Price: $12.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 2811
Released: January 31, 2006 |
| Our Price: $1.76 |
| Used Price: $1.10 |
|
MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
SET IN A 19TH CENTURY EUROPEAN VILLAGE, THIS STOP-MOTIONANUMATED FEATURE FOLLOWS THE STORY OF VICTOR, A YOUNG MAN WHO IS WHISKED AWAY TO THE UNDERWORLD & WED TO A MYSTERIOUS CORPSEBRIDE, WHILE HIS REAL BRIDE WAITS IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING.
Description of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (Full Screen Edition):
Who else but Tim Burton could make Corpse Bride, a necrophiliac's delight that's fun for the whole family? Returning to the richly imaginative realm of stop-motion animation (after previous successes with The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach), Burton, with codirector Mike Johnson, invites us to visit the dour, ashen, and drearily Victorian mansions of the living, where young Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp) is bequeathed to wed the lovely Victoria (Emily Watson). But the wedding rehearsal goes sour and, in the kind of Goth-eerie forest that only exists in Burton-land, Victor suddenly finds himself accidentally married to the Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter), a blue-tinted, half-skeletal beauty (how pleasantly full-bosomed she remains!) with a loquacious maggot installed behind one prone-to-popping eyeball. This being a Burton creation, the underworld of the dead is a lively and colorful place indeed, and Danny Elfman's songs and score make it even livelier, presenting Victor with quite a dilemma: Should he return above-ground to Victoria, or remain devoted to his corpse bride? At a brisk 76 minutes, Burton's graveyard whimsy (loosely based on a 19th century Russian folktale) never wears out its welcome, and the voice casting (which includes Tracey Ullman and Albert Finney) is superbly matched the film's gloriously amusing character design, guaranteed to yield a wealth of gruesome toys and action figures for many Halloweens to come. --Jeff Shannon
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (Full Screen Edition) Reviews:
A strong arguement for necrophilia 
2009-12-11 - Tim Burton returned to his stop-motion greatness is this great romantic fantasy. Once again teaming up with animator Mike Johnson who he worked with on The Nightmare Before Christmas, the brought Burton's idea for a short story invoving necrophilia into an enjoyable family feature.
Taking place in Victorian era England, the worried young Victor is engaged to the very ladylike a Victoria(a joke on Victor/Victoria), but is having trouble remembering his vows. After dropping his engagement ring in the woods, he unintentionally resurrects Emily, the corpse of a bride who was killed on her wedding night. She takes him to the underworld where he learns her sad tale. Victor manages to talk her into taking him topside by a magic potion, and tells Victoria what happened, but Emily spitefully returns him to back to the land of the dead. Meanwhile, Victoria's parents believe Victor has ditched her, so they promise her hand to the aristocratic Lord Barkis, who really intends to kill and take her fortune, although he's unaware that Victoria's family was really marrying her to Victor for his family's money. Victor himself hears of Victoria's new fiance via one of his old coachmen who recently died of a bad cough. This causes Victor to consent to marrying Emily, but they decide to take their wedding upstairs to the land of the living. After an initial shock by most of the townspeople who think that's its a typical zombie holocaust, they realize that the dead are just there for the wedding. Victoria makes her way to the chapel, and Emily notices her just before Victor is willingly going to drink poison to join Emily in holy matrimony. Emily decides to let Victor marry Victoria instead, but Lord Barkis shows up and Emily recognizes him as the man who killed her. He unwittingly drinks the poison though, and the dead guests drag him back to the underworld. Emily then drifts peacefully off into the afterlife, leaving Victor and Victoria to live happily ever after.
When this movie first came out, I liked it but quickly forgot about it because of how much more entertaining I found the Wallace & Gromit movie(another stop-motion movie)at the time which came out a few weeks later. It wasn't until I rented it again a few years later that I grew to appreciate it more. It's got a bittersweet story to it done to gothic background. There's some fine humor in it, along with a few slightly unecessary but still welcome musical numbers. I especially loved the outlandish character designs and dark backgrounds, and how much more livelier they made the world of the dead seem from the world of the living. I highly recommend this as a movie to show at either Halloween or Valentines, an definately one for your video library.
Love it! 
2009-12-09 - I love this movie and since I couldn't find it in any of the stores I looked in (Walmart, Target) I tried online. Hurray!
I'm sorry Tim... 
2009-12-05 - I love Tim Burton movies, but this one I'm sorry to say was very boring. It was very slow too... The storyline was simple, but I kept getting distracted from the movie because of my boredom. This is not a movie for those that bore easily.
Bringing puppets to life, but a few spots of rot in the script
2009-11-22 - "Corpse Bride" is a gruesome addition to the macabre oeuvre of Tim Burton. It tells the story, in stop-motion animation, of Victor and Victoria, a lonely boy and girl who are being forced to wed by their money-grubbing parents. But a chance encounter in graveyard brings back from the dead Emily, the reanimated corpse of a spurned bride. When Victor accidentally slips a ring onto her bony finger, she resolves to wed Victor and bring him back with her to the world of the dead.
The sets are terrific, Victorian ghoulishness at it creepy finest. The dead live underground, in a fast-paced society that mirrors the past, complete with bars and dancehalls. The dead themselves are partly and mostly-decayed skeletons that would probably scare the bejesus out of younger kids. Emily is a case in point. One leg and one arm are decayed to bone. Her ribs are visible on one side through her tattered wedding dress. Instead of rouge, one cheek is rotted to black and the other has lost enough flesh to reveal a toothy jaw line. That Burton's puppet master manage to make her look sexy shows their mastery of the genre. There is wonderful macabre humor is well. At French headwaiter is just that -- the waiter's guillotined head, made mobile by an skittering army of corpse-eating bugs.
The film is wonderful in all respects but plotting. The puppets are masterfully rendered in shades of brown (for the loving) and blue (for the dead). The animation is silky and smooth. But a number of plot lines don't make sense -- do not read on if you wish to be surprised! In spite of Emily's forced marriage to another character, there's no real reason that Victor must marry Emily. And there is no reason that Emily should decide to forgo her marriage to Victor when she sees Victoria in the church. And why a certain evil character would choose to drink a death-dealing potion is a mystery. Except that he plot required that he do so.
Still, there are many, many wonderful touches to The Corpse Bride. A scene of a character dissolving into butterflies was unexpected, touching and stylistically stunning. The stop motion technique did not prevent the artists from giving the characters expression and life. The story's unique touches (like a boy reunited with his long dead dog) were clever and original and fit the plot perfectly.
Almost lifelike, The Corpse Bride's plot could have used just a touch of the mortician's brush to render it restful and at peace.
Corpse Bride
2009-11-18 - This was purchased for a Christmas gift. It arrived ontime and in good condition.
