Regardless of whether you love or hate his style, Tim Burton certainly knows how to make a unique movie. A true champion of the bizarre, Burton's films range from the sympathetic \Edward Scissorhands"" to the elaborate ""Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,"" all united by his passion for misunderstood heroes and differences between reality and fantasy.
For his latest production, Burton has restored the style of one of his true classics, 1993's ""The Nightmare Before Christmas,"" teaming his perennially disturbed thoughts with complex animation and musical numbers. The end result is ""Corpse Bride,"" a ghoulishly touching love story that also happens to be one of the most visually stunning films in years.
The story, based around a Russian folk tale, follows Victor Van Dort (voiced by Burton's golden boy Johnny Depp) as he is forced into an arranged marriage with the shy Victoria Everglott (Emily Watson). Unable to complete his vows during the rehearsal, he wanders out into the woods and slips the wedding band on a branch, unaware it is in fact the hand of Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), a bride murdered on her wedding day.
What follows is little less than a macabre roller coaster, as Victor is spirited away to the brightly colored land of the dead and shoved among characters such as a severed French head and a midget skeleton general. Desperately trying to find a way back to his living fiancee, Victor finds his situation complicated by a noble pursuing her as well as stirring feelings for the corpse bride.
In portraying this complicated situation, Burton has returned to the lost art of stop-motion animation, using a series of animatronic puppets controlled by motors. While this is immensely difficult to do-some reports say it took a whole day to get two minutes of useful footage for the film-there's a lifelike quality that computer animation can't provide, and every one of Victor's long gaits and piano solos shows off the production team's care and attention.
While the appearance of the puppets is enough to set ""Corpse Bride"" apart from any other film in theaters, it is the voices that really bring the characters to life. Depp conveys an endearing awkwardness far more pleasant than his occasionally grating role in ""Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,"" while the corpse bride's sorrowful humor gives her more spirit than a half-rotted woman should be allowed. The icing on the cake is the aristocratic voices of Christopher Lee, Albert Finney and Tracey Ullman.
For additional joy, Burton has teamed up again with composer Danny Elfman to turn ""Corpse Bride"" into a musical, reviving another fading animated film trend. While the lyrics are hard to understand at first, the instrumentals are terrific, and with Burton's twisted humor-such as a skeleton jazz band with instruments that are literally extensions of their bodies-the four musical numbers are every bit as catchy as the songs from ""Nightmare.""
If anything is wrong with ""Corpse Bride,"" it's that it's simply too short: at 76 minutes, it feels like both Burton and Elfman are forced to rush. This leaves viewers almost unable to catch a breath as Victor goes back and forth between worlds, and in areas like the land of the dead you almost feel cheated out of more time and detail.
A few bumps in the road, however, can't obscure the fact that ""Corpse Bride"" is one of Burton's best films and it comes close to being one of the best animated films in years. Between this and ""Nightmare,"" Burton shouldn't have any excuses to stop making films in this style-when his tools are as complex as his images, he's at his best.
