'Corpse Bride' blurs line between quaint, creepy

Tim Burton includes humor and a sense of romance in the 74-minute film.
By ROBERT W. BUTLER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
"Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" is like that miniature Dickens Village the neighbors drag out at Christmastime. Only this time it's been overrun by the whimsical skeletal figures from a Mexican Day of the Dead celebration.
Quaint or creepy? In Burton's world, there's not much difference.
More than a decade ago, Burton gave us the deliriously quirky "The Nightmare Before Christmas." Like that work, "Corpse" is a first-class example of clay-animation, the painstaking art of moving inanimate objects every so slightly and filming them one frame at a time in order to bring them to life.
But "Corpse" actually improves on "Nightmare" by giving us a more conventional hero, a genuine sense of romance and a streamlined narrative.
The screenplay by Burton and longtime collaborators Caroline Thompson, John August and Pamela Pettler centers on a marriage of convenience.
Parents plan wedding
In a gray/blue Victorian burg populated by elongated citizens, the nouveau riche Van Dorts, William (Paul Whitehouse) and Nell (Tracey Ullman), are preparing for the wedding of their only son Victor (Johnny Depp). For the Van Dorts, who have risen from being humble fishmongers to one of the richest families in town, it's a chance to finally breach the impenetrable wall of English society.
Victor's betrothed, you see, is the daughter of the aristocratic Everglots, Finis (Albert Finney) and Maudeline (Joanna Lumley ). These venal snobs are facing impoverishment; the only way out is to marry off their daughter Victoria (Emily Watson) to someone who's loaded.
Nobody's bothered to ask Victor or Victoria what they think of the arrangement, and early in the film the two soon-to-be-marrieds meet for the first time and discover that there really is a spark there.
Wandering near the local graveyard to memorize his wedding vows, the hapless Victor speaks them aloud, only to hear a feminine voice answer, "I do."
Land of the dead
This would be the Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter), a young woman murdered on her wedding day who has spent the intervening years awaiting the arrival of a husband. Any husband. Now she rises from the grave, a pale, wraith-like beauty whose tattered veil floats around her like mist. Before he knows what's happening, Victor finds himself in the land of the dead.
Which is actually quite a colorful place. Literally. While Burton and crew have conceived the world of the living as pretty much black and white, the underworld is a riot of reds, yellows and earth tones. The citizens welcome Victor with open bony arms, and one of the film's jokes is that as a properly brought up English lad, Victor is loath to spoil the fun by abandoning his now desperately happy bride.
Ere long, Victor finds himself emotionally torn between the living Victoria and the dead-but-alluring Corpse Bride, who makes decomposition look downright sexy.
True, one leg and one arm consist of nothing but bone; she has a hole in one cheek where her teeth show through, and behind her right eye there lives a maggot who talks in the voice of Peter Lorre. These drawbacks not withstanding, the Corpse Bride is a fox.
Appealing elements
Before the film comes to a more-or-less happy conclusion, Burton and co-director Mike Johnson deliver a couple of nicely staged Danny Elfman musical numbers (two of them dead-on parodies of Gilbert & amp; Sullivan, and one a sort of New Orleans jazz/voodoo bit), some amusing characters (I was particularly taken with Christopher Lee's profoundly joyless Anglican pastor) and about as many good-natured-but-black jokes about death and decay as one film can accommodate.
Visually, "Corpse Bride" is a tour de force that superbly mimics the conventions of live-action film. The character design, set direction, camera movements and especially the lighting are first-rate.
And Burton & amp; Co. have the good sense to wrap it all up in 74 minutes, before it can wear out its welcome.
In a nutshell: Burton's latest macabre puppet show is thoroughly enjoyable, if a little thin on story.