Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

From the wonderful mind of Tim Burton comes the Corpse Bride, cousin to his classic marvel that was The Nightmare Before Christmas 12 years ago. I will not compare them, I will only say that I love them both and will forever be in my Best Of... lists.

Johnny Depp voices Victor Van Dort, a young man soon to be married to the beautiful Victoria Everglot (voiced by Emily Watson), a young woman he's never met, but it's an arranged wedding so they have no voice about it. Once they met for the first time though, sparks fly as the two of them share an emotional scene playing piano. It could work for them, but the night of the rehearsal (which is on the same day they met), Victor's troubles giving his wedding vows prompt the magnificent Pastor Galswells (powerfully voiced by Christopher Lee) to kick him out and ask him to come back when he's learned the proper vows. And so Victor leaves town and goes to the forest, where he recites his vows to the trees, but when he finally gets it right, he rings a branch sticking out of the ground which turns out to be the skeleton of a dead woman, the Corpse Bride (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter). She comes to life, and Victor passes out.

When he wakes up he's in the Land of the Dead, a place full of colorful, magical creatures, skeletons dancing and singing. It's a wonderful place, specially compared to the dark world of the living he used to be in. He sees his bride again. She's beautiful, and weirdly full of life considering she's actually dead. He's not dead though, and he wants to come back to Victoria, but he's married now.

Claymation has never looked better, made with digital still photography cameras instead of film cameras. Everything looks perfectly detailed, and there's lots of little stuff in the backgrounds and in every character.
And there are lots of those. Besides the three love birds, there's the parents. Victor's are Nell Van Dort (Tracey Ullman) and William Van Dort (Paul Whitehouse), and Victoria's are Maudeline Everglot (Joanna Lumley) and Finnis Everglot (Albert Finney). Then we have Mayhew (also Paul Whitehouse), the Van Dort's chauffeur who dies and while down there notifies Victor that Victoria is set to be married to Barkis Bittern (Richard E. Grant), an evil man who is only after her parents' money, which they don't have, and so are making Victoria marry him because they think he has money.
And finally there's the Maggot. A sure to be favorite of the audiences, he lives in the Corpse Bride's head and pops out every now and then to give his opinion and even advice. He's voiced by Enn Reitel.
There a lot more characters, and they all come together when the dead come to life, an excellent sequence towards the end in which the living meet the dead when Victor brings them all up.

If I had one complaint about the movie, it would be that Victoria gets criminally underdeveloped. We know almost nothing about her, but we know almost everything about the Corpse Bride. Victor is the classic Tim Burton lead character so what we know about him is enough to know him completely.

Danny Elfman is what made Nightmare so excellent for me. His score and songs were astounding, and he does it again here. He has 4 songs here, and while the opening one, 'According to Plan', sang by Victor's parents didn't do it for me, the rest were magical. 'Remains of the Day' and 'Tears to Shed' tell us about the land of the dead and the Corpse Bride, and those are really what stands out more of the movie.

Now we all know these are Tim Burton movies, and they are, but there's something weird with both of them. Burton wrote the story for Nightmare, but it was adapted by someone else. And he didn't direct it, Henry Selick did. Now Corpse Bride is codirected by Burton and Mike Johnson, but written by John August, Pamela Pettler and Caroline Thompson, who adapted it from the classic tale. I find this extremely weird, but whatever, because the characters and places have that classic Tim Burton style I love and Elfman's music is once again excellent despite being a lot less compared to Nightmare. But let's not compare them, all that matters now is that Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is brilliant, and an instant classic. And give it the Oscar for Best Animated Movie already please.