Review: 'Corpse Bride' Magical, Stylish Tale

'Corpse Bride' (PG) (out of four)

Tim Burton so believably brings his worlds to life, with such a dark, dreamy and dazzling imagination, that we all but take for granted that he has taken us on some of the most delightfully absurd adventures of modern cinema.

The problem is that there's a downside to such consistent quality: higher expectations.

He has done so much so well that when a brilliant film like 2003's "Big Fish" comes along, not only wrapping us up in a towering tribute to imagination but also commenting on the lost sense of wonder in today's movies, his work is criticized for failing to live up to his stylized landscapes of the past.

For some, Burton has no other purpose in life than his haunting, dark drama.

It is those people who will find themselves similarly distressed by "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride." Here, despite what you might be led to believe from the film's title and marketing, "Corpse Bride" is a mere comic tromp through a world that uses darkness more for punch lines than atmosphere.

In many ways it's a two-tiered tale. Above ground, Victor (Johnny Depp) is a shy bachelor forced to marry by his parents. But when he meets Victoria (Emily Watson), the woman to whom he's been promised, he becomes a jumpy, stuttering mess, terrified he will screw up the wedding.

So he leaves the rehearsal, desperate to calm his nerves, and wanders into a nearby forest. But as he practices his vows and acts out the ceremony, he mistakenly awakens a dead bride-to-be with his meticulously memorized words of love. The corpse rises from the ground and accepts the wedding proposal.

Not long after, Victor wakes up in hell.

Well, not so much the fire-and-brimstone hell that is usually the preferred image for filmmakers. This is more the laid-back, fun-loving and chic side of hell -- populated by hip sinners in trendy bars.

Burton, along with his co-director Mike Johnson and his writers John August ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") and Pamela Pettler, fill this world with an eclectic array of freaks and misfits. The Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter) is a sweet, but misguided, one-eyed beauty who died after being abandoned by her lover. Her friends include the old bearded man wise in ways of spells, the talking maggot who lives inside her brain -- providing a lively inner monologue -- and even a yipping skeleton of a pet dog.

Victor tells it to play dead, not remembering where he is.

The two stories, told both above ground and below, serve to repeatedly contrast each other. Above ground, unhappy people blandly go through the routine of life, marrying people as a commercial enterprise, unfamiliar with the concept of love. In hell's club room, however, the corpses seem more alive than the living, and those getting married far below the buzz of society see the love in the equation.

In some ways "Corpse Bride" is subtly reminiscent of Walt Disney's best cartoons, which brought an energy to animation that was rarely found in live-action films. But Burton matches that life with a style that is uniquely his, a mix of the macabre, romantic, sublime and juvenile.

In many ways it's better than Burton's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," mixing shades of light and dark in achieving a healthy gray that "Charlie" just couldn't see.

The movie ends with a wonderful sequence that takes place under a moon-lit sky. "Corpse Bride" is precisely the kind of fantastic, exotic story that kids dream about on such nights, gazing up at the supernatural, and sadly the kind of movie us adults, who rarely take the time to look up any more, take for granted.