We all remember the zany warmth of A Nightmare Before Christmas, and attribute its genius to the trademark vision of Tim Burton. I myself regarded Nightmare as Burton's greatest film, and the most potent celluloid imprint of his psyche.
In fact, Nightmare was based on a poem Burton wrote; the film itself was directed by Henry Selick. While I have no doubts of Burton's proximity to that project, this clarification does make it easier to understand why Corpse Bride seems to capture Burton in a more pure (and, unfortunately, exhausted) form.
Corpse Bride is set in a brooding British town with inhabitants that derive a sense of pride from the dreary symmetry of their lives. Some scowl like gargoyles, others lurch down side streets, and all seem too smug to care that the sun never shines on their twisted roofs.
The exception to the rule is a young scarecrow of a man, Victor Van Dort (played by Johnny Depp), who prefers to perch on his balcony and enjoy the company and color of wandering butterflies. Like the best of Burton's protagonists, he is meek only to the extent that his timidity underscores the hostility of the world around him.
When Victor must face the reality of his upcoming arranged marriage (and inadvertently give his hand to a decaying bride), it becomes clear that despite his endearing cowardice, he is a young man of sound and daring convictions. Such is the movement of a token Burton movie: the slow unearthing of beauty and truth from beneath the darkest of circumstances.
Corpse Bride certainly looks gorgeous. The animation alternately glides and gallops with a dark elegance that Nightmare Before Christmas could not have anticipated. But at the same time, it is also very quaint?both in story and length?with thematic pivots a tad too curt for emotional currency.
Unlike Nightmare, which felt not only innovative but also truly alive, Corpse Bride plays like a fairy tale breathing borrowed whimsy. Greatly missed is the wit, energy, and subversive simplicity of its predecessor.
Granted, the two are different films, so it may appear unfair to make such comparisons. But because Corpse Bride clearly claws at Nightmare's hilarious use of the grotesque without ever grasping it, such a comparison becomes a duty rather than a potshot.
So, as Victor's dilemma takes flight, the movie begins to decompose. Through its beautifully animated skin, we see the stark skeleton of Tim Burton himself falling back on the crutches of a now antique creativity.
Burton fanatics will notice that Corpse Bride is heavily indebted to his earlier (and greater) efforts. Its inter-spiritual marriage and dead-meet-the-living angles are taken explicitly from Beetle Juice, and Victor's character seems to be a perfect clay replication of Depp's live-action loner, Ichabod Crane, from Sleepy Hollow.
Finally, as observed earlier, the whole thing dreams of the bebop freneticism that made Nightmare such a delight. This is understandable; I dearly miss Oogie Boogie too. But the point remains that rather than serve as Easter egg throwbacks to Burton's larger body of work, such similarities compromise Corpse's identity as a stand-alone feature. It's as if Burton has forgotten his once unique vision and must struggle to copy his own style with a mishmash of past films. While his newest piece feels closer to his heart, it in turn distances itself from ours.
The fact that Corpse Bride unravels and becomes Burton's desperate Frankenstein is both tragic and revelatory. His remake of Planet of the Apes was ambitiously dismal; Big Fish plunged off the cliff of melodrama and his take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, while praised by critics, was scattershot and underdeveloped. Corpse Bride is not the final screw off the director's chair for Burton by any means, but it is a wake-up call. In some ways, his career has recently been crippled by self-devotion. While Corpse Bride could have been a return to form, it is mostly a retreat to formula.