Corpse Bride

"Please, there's been a mistake. I'm not dead."

Shy Victor Van Dort (Depp) is preparing for his arranged marriage to Victoria Everglot (Watson).  He is nervous, but his social-climbing mother Nell (Ullman) and fish merchant father William (Whitehouse) insist.  Victoria longs to marry for love, but her aristocrat parents Lord (Finney) and Lady (Lumley) Everglot insist that love is overrated.  There are sparks when Victor and Victoria first meet, but nerves get the best of Victor during the rehearsal and he runs into the woods to collect his thoughts.

As he practices his vows in the woods, he places the ring on a branch.  The branch turns out to be the finger of Emily (Carter) the corpse bride.  She accepts and takes him to the Land of the Dead to celebrate their marriage.  Will Victor find a way back to life?


This is the third stop-motion film Tim Burton has produced (Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, both were made for Disney and directed by Henry Selick) and the first he has directed.  Like Burton's other stop-motion films, this is a musical with songs by his frequent collaborator Danny Elfman.  Elfman even voices one of the characters, skeleton Bonesjangles who sings the title song.  The songs are entertaining, but aren't quite as memorable as the ones in Nightmare Before Christmas

The story is based on a Russian folk tale, with a Burton twist.  It is a stylized, macabre/gothic world.  The living are rigid and have a muted color palette (mostly grays), while the dead are more colorful (physically and as characters).  The dead characters are much more interesting than the living characters.  The cast is littered with Burton regulars: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Christopher Lee, Albert Finney, Michael Gough, etc.

The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2005, but lost to Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were Rabbit.  It is a decent stop-animation film, but definitely not the best... and it is not Burton's best.

Corpse Bride (2005) minutes
Director: Tim Burton & Mike Johnson
Starring: Johnny Depp as Victor Van Dort
Helena Bonham Carter as Emily the Corpse Bride
Emily Watson as Victoria Everglot
Tracey Ullman as Nell Van Dort
Paul Whitehouse as William Van Dort
Joanna Lumley as Lady Maudeline Everglot
Albert Finney as Lord Finis Everglot
Richard E. Grant as Lord Barkis Bittern
Christopher Lee as Pastor Gallswell
Michael Gough as Elder Gutknecht