Corpse Bride is full blown Tim Burton goodness, and to think this film came from the same guy who brought us Batman back in 1989, Batman Returns in 1992, and returned to his stop-motion roots with Corpse Bride; it kind of brought his making of Vincent in 1982 full circle with 2005's Corpse Bride, co-directed with Mike Johnson.
In 2005's mostly Disney-dominated landscape of animation, films like Warner Brother's Corpse Bride and Aardman and Dreamworks Animations' Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit showed that the 'Mouse House' had its dominance challenged in ways that were comparable to Shrek changing everything in 2001. And was it nice seeing a stop-motion film that was wholesome and lightly spooky have critical and box office success to match any Disney film at the time. Tim Burton always relished gothic stuff and he gives its land of the dead a technicolor twist and makes the land of the living drab and grey; kind of adds ironic subtext to life for some people and a nice twist on the supposed drab associations of gothic imagery.
As a stop-motion fan this film was definitely a treat, and it's always satisfying seeing a director that can do both live-action and animated feature films justice: and you can still tell it's distinctly Burton-esque from top to bottom.
Corpse Bride is good family entertainment even with its death-inspired imagery and it's probably a therapeutic film in terms of coping with loss and moving on. But hey, maybe it's just me.
Corpse Bride is solid entertainment that stands up in the world of animation and an important piece of stop-motion canon. 4.5/5 stars. 9/10 IMDb points.
In 2005's mostly Disney-dominated landscape of animation, films like Warner Brother's Corpse Bride and Aardman and Dreamworks Animations' Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit showed that the 'Mouse House' had its dominance challenged in ways that were comparable to Shrek changing everything in 2001. And was it nice seeing a stop-motion film that was wholesome and lightly spooky have critical and box office success to match any Disney film at the time. Tim Burton always relished gothic stuff and he gives its land of the dead a technicolor twist and makes the land of the living drab and grey; kind of adds ironic subtext to life for some people and a nice twist on the supposed drab associations of gothic imagery.
As a stop-motion fan this film was definitely a treat, and it's always satisfying seeing a director that can do both live-action and animated feature films justice: and you can still tell it's distinctly Burton-esque from top to bottom.
Corpse Bride is good family entertainment even with its death-inspired imagery and it's probably a therapeutic film in terms of coping with loss and moving on. But hey, maybe it's just me.
Corpse Bride is solid entertainment that stands up in the world of animation and an important piece of stop-motion canon. 4.5/5 stars. 9/10 IMDb points.