Nothing new in dark tale

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have collaborated on a number films,

beginning with “Edward Scissorhands” and continuing through this

summer’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

Now, they are partnered again for the stop-motion animated “Corpse

Bride” (co-directed by Mike Johnson).

Similar in tone to their previous efforts, “Sleepy Hollow” for

one, wherein Depp plays, or, in this case, voices, a passive,

sensitive societal outcast buffeted more by the actions of others

than those of his own.

“Corpse Bride” is set solidly in a macabre milieu of visual

fantasia inspired by Hammer Horror Films, Rankin-Bass animation and

German Expressionism; an upside-down world of inspired symbolism

where you must shed the chains of the conventional in order to really

live.

Here, the dead swing merrily all night long to beatnik jazz.

Meanwhile, the living, cinched breathless into corsets and suits, are

condemned to a self-imposed mundane existence; they remain stiff,

averse to pleasure even in the presence of soul-stirring music which

is treated as sin rather than salvation.

Depp is Victor Van Dort, who is the only son of nouveau rich

parents forced into an arranged marriage with Victoria (voiced by

Emily Watson) of the grotesque Everglot family.

Nervously practicing his vows in the woods, Victor inadvertently

places the wedding ring on the skeletal finger of what becomes his

“Corpse Bride.”

She quickly rises from the quite literal grave of single-hood and

embraces her man in (un)holy matrimony.

Thus, Victor must free himself to prove to Victoria his worth and

love for her, all the while learning about life from the dead.

Films as visually striking and as packed with ideas as “Corpse

Bride” don’t come around often enough. There is real art in its

design. Despite the superb and uniquely alive animation; its

well-worn story material, to Burton fans anyway, almost buries the

film.

Luckily, characters such as Victoria rise above the sameness of it

all.

The combination of animation and Emily Watson’s voice work create

a truly engaging character; one you can certainly believe that the

inert Victor would fight back from the other side to hold her hand in

matrimony.

REEL FACTOID

“The Corpse Bride” was shot over a 55-week period, during which

109,000,440 individually animated frames had to be set up and filmed.

This is the first feature to be made with commercial digital still

photography cameras instead of film cameras. As an indication of the

painstaking nature of stop-motion animation, it took the animators 28

separate shots to make the Bride blink.

* BOB HARRIS has been hooked on movies since he was 13 when his

brother got a job in a multiplex and Bob saw all the movies he wanted

for free.