What do you get when an unhappy young man accidentally marries a beautiful young woman who just happens to be deceased instead of the woman he is supposed to wed? A triumphant comeback for Tim Burton, that’s what. I have no doubts that this film should satisfy the folks who were a bit let down by Burton’s last three movies. (Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory all caused grumblings among the faithful.) The Corpse Bride is Burton doing what he does best: a delightful mix of the macabre with humor and great pathos. The film is nothing nothing short of visual perfection. Though the animation has a look similar to The Nightmare Before Christmas, I found that the movement had a completely different feel. Where Nightmare tended toward the cartoonish, The Corpse Bride seems aimed at a slightly older audience. Since the story is an adaptation of a morbid folktale it might be familiar to some watchers, but Burton has veered from the source material and added his own unique flourishes. (Notice the Harryhausen piano and the Peter Lorre-esque graveworm!) Unlike Nightmare, The Corpse Bride is not a full-on musical, but the score and vocal pieces that Danny Elfman provided make for tidy and wondrous bits of exposition. The characters are wan and wonderful, the setting marvelous and macabre, the story is guignol and grand. If this film doesn’t make you want to seek out a nice, warm funereal plot of your own you may want to check and see if your heart is still beating.

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