Tim Burton delivers a grade A corpse

By Chhun Sun
The Collegian

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are on top of the list when it comes to combos of directors and actors, which include Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise as well as Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman.

Usually, Burton is the creepy mastermind behind the films, while Depp is responsible for carrying out the thoughts in an artistic manner.

You’ve seen their work. Mostly recently, it was in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” But what really put the two on the map was their work in 1990s “Edward Scissorhands,” a film that showed the heartthrob Depp in a disturbing role of a boy with scissor hands who has a gentle heart.

And the combo is still running strong. This time around is the animated film “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride,” which opens nationwide today.

The film is set in a Victorian town that is so gloomy that it might turn away an audience if it wasn’t for the fact that Burton and Depp are behind this creation.

The premise of the film is that two young people who have never met are about to be wed, in the name of joining societies.

Victor (voiced by Depp) is the bachelor son of canned- fish tycoons Nell and William Van Dort (voiced by Tracey Ullman and Paul Whitehouse), who both have always dreamt of joining high society.

Then there are old-money aristocrats Maudeline and Finnis Everglot (voiced by Joanna Lumley and Albert Finney) who are full of class but short on cash. That’s why they want their sweet daughter Victoria (voiced Emily Watson) to marry Victor.

From the beginning, the film is predictable. Young couple meets. Young couple falls in love. Young couple falls out of love. And somehow, young couple falls back in love again. But it also offers a sad tone, which is expected in films that Burton is associated with (Think: “The Nightmare Before Christmas, which Burton wrote).

“Corpse Bride” is created in the unusual union of two animated films made through stop-motion techniques that involves moving inanimate objects while photographing them one frame at a time. In this way, the film has an eerie feel, even though it deals mostly with the madness of young love and the lengths young lovers will go through to achieve what is rightfully theirs.

Victor is a shy and clumsy teenager who fails miserably in executing his vows during wedding rehearsal. Then he wanders into an eerily soulless forest and serendipitously proposes to a dead bride. What ensues is an underworld of dancing skeletons, bodiless heads, tortured bodies and anything that is creepy. But the people in this world have more life than those in the living world, and that’s where the magic of Burton really shines.

He always finds ways to stretch something dark and make it into something beautiful, something people of all ages can enjoy.

Then again, it’s a bit of a stretch when Victor almost gives Emily, the dead bride, a chance, considering she is dead. But it’s all in the name of hilarity.

“Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride” defies its title. It has more life than most movies with live actors and actresses.

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