Corpse Bride

The foppish Victor Van Dort has been pushed into an arranged marriage with Victoria Everglot by his overbearing parents who are eager to climb the social ladder. Unbeknownst to them, Victoria's own snooty parents are only deigning to allow their daughter to marry someone that they consider beneath them because the family coffers are empty. However, Victor soon finds himself with more pressing problems on his mind than remembering the correct words of his vows, however, when he accidentally resurrects the alluring Corpse Bride, who determines that she must make him her husband and take him back to her domain, the Land of the Dead.

2005 was a busy year for Tim Burton, helming two separate projects simultaneously: the big budget live action Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the comparatively more modest stop motion animated tale Corpse Bride. The latter, to be the first feature-length animated project with which he would be involved since 1996's James and the Giant Peach, and his first as a director rather than producer (discounting a handful of short subjects, including the fantastically moody Vincent), unsurprisingly attracted a considerable amount of interest among animation aficionados, many of whom expected something along the lines of a successor to the brilliant The Nightmare Before Christmas. Such expectations were not entirely inappropriate, given the medium - both being stop motion affairs - and the similar subject matter - both are fairytale musicals set partially in the lands of the dead.

In execution, the similarities to the earlier film are undeniable, but sadly the end results are something of a disappointment. In reality, Corpse Bride lacks The Nightmare Before Christmas' spontaneity, vibrance and overall sense of fun, replacing the charmingly crooked worlds of Halloween Town and Christmas Town with an aesthetic this is simply too stilted and too precise to be as lovable as its predecessor. The Land of the Living certainly has a moody gothic atmosphere, courtesy of production designer Alex McDowell (who also designed the sets for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), but it lacks the tactile, lived-in quality of the worlds of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Clearly, this was at least partly intentional, in order to contrast it with the more colourful and lively Land of the Dead, but neither world ever really comes to life in the manner of those of its predecessors. Indeed, one very much gets the sense that this is a film that is trying a little too hard to be a Tim Burton production - perhaps unsurprising, given that Burton left the day to day running of the production to Mike Johnson, who I would imagine was given a strict brief to follow his boss' style to the letter.

These problems extend to the quality of the character acting. The animation is technically first rate - that much is undeniable - but once again, it feels too precise, too exact. Everything is painfully smooth, both in terms of the characters' movements and the designs of the models, which means that, as distinctive as many of the designs are - Burton and co-designer Carlos Grangel certainly stuck to their maxim that every character be recognisable from their silhouette - they seem rather flat, and don't ever live and breathe. This is especially true of Victor, who essentially looks like a puppet version of Johnny Depp circa Sleepy Hollow, and lacks any particular nuances in terms of facial expressions. As it happens, the puppets in this film were actually fitted with robotic steel armatures in order to allow their facial movements to be controlled via remote control, rather than going through the painstaking process of having to create and fit a different face model for each expression (as was the case with The Nightmare Before Christmas). The intention was not only to save time but also to make the facial expressions seem more vibrant, but, ironically, the end result is that they simply seem lifeless.

Likewise, the voice acting leaves something to be desired. Burton predictably selected his leading man of choice, Johnny Depp, to lend his voice to the character of Victor, but this strikes me as having been a very poor decision. In his vocal performance, Depp appears to be channeling the same Hugh Grant style of bumbling Englishman that he used in Sleepy Hollow, which simply doesn't sound all that impressive when you're only hearing a voice rather than seeing the whole performance. This problem, I suspect, lies at the heart of the film's stiltedness: rather than hiring professional voice-over artists to record the dialogue, Burton has gone for live action movie stars. Whatever their talents in the medium of live action, Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson and so on are not qualified for this sort of work. They are clearly unused to relying on vocals alone to convey the necessary emotions, and as a result their performances seem quite bland. As I've said in countless other reviews of animated films, the animator is responsible for just as much of the final performance as the voice artist, if not more, but in this case the animators are hamstrung by dull vocals, which means that the animation is either dull itself, or else seems detached from the voices.

Corpse Bride left me feeling incredibly unfulfilled. Despite its stylistic and narrative similarities to The Nightmare Before Christmas, in execution its quality is much closer to the lesser James and the Giant Peach. Ultimately, therefore, the film is first rate in terms of production values, but the end result rings hollow: all surface and no heart.


HD DVD Presentation

Corpse Bride is presented at 1080p in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (the packaging lists 1.85:1, but the image fills the entire display area of my overscan-free PC monitor, so it can be assumed that the mattes have been opened up slightly), encoded using the VC1 format.

In the past, I've been a little critical of Warner's HD DVDs. Million Dollar Baby and Constantine were both edge enhanced and slightly noise reduced, while Charlie and the Chocolate Factory looked noticeably diffuse (a flaw also affecting the HD broadcast master) and suffered from a few instances of compression artefacts, so I was a little apprehensive about Corpse Bride. Luckily, the results are considerably better than I was expecting - indeed, this is possibly best HD DVD I've seen so far, with only by the majestic Serenity vying with it in terms of visual pizzazz. Edge enhancement is non-existent, contrast is spot-on, colours (in the saturated "Land of the Dead" sequences) are a joy to behold. The film itself was shot in 1080p, making this a pixel-to-pixel reproduction of the camera image itself, and the result is essentially a perfect transfer.

As I've said before, I tend to find that animated films feature the most impressive audio design of all, because the entire soundscape must, in effect, be created from scratch. Despite the deficiencies of the vocal performances, therefore, Corpse Bride's Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 EX track is a treat to the ears. The lack of a TrueHD track on a film with such impressive audio is a little disappointing, but I have a hard time imagining it being substantially bettered by what is on offer here. The clarity is excellent, the bass deep and the number of split-channel effects highly impressive. This really does sound like a living, breathing world. French and Spanish dubs are also included, also in Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 EX, as well as an isolated score track, in Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1.

Subtitles are provided in English, French and Spanish for the film itself but, as per usual for Warner, not the extras. This is one area in which they could really stand to learn a thing or two from Universal, who have a good track record for subtitling all the bonus content of their HD DVDs, barring audio commentaries.


Extras

Unlike Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride does not include any extras that are exclusive to the HD DVD release. Once again, though, every feature from the standard definition release has been ported over.

The extras are comprised of short featurettes of varying lengths, the shortest running for just over 4 minutes and the longest for 13 minutes. Most of these are presented in the traditional EPK style, combining clips from the finished film with behind the scenes footage and various members of the cast and crew patting themselves and each other on the back. As so often tends to be the case with bonus materials pertaining to animated features, an excessive amount of time is spent on the voice actors, while the animators tend to get short shrift. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Christopher Lee, ever the gentleman, is the only actor interviewed who seems to realise that yes, the animators have by far the most difficult job and contribute far more to the characters' performances.

The film's theatrical trailer is also included, presented in plain on standard definition, as well as the isolated score in the form of a Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1, although, unlike the main audio mixes, it is no EX-encoded.


Overall

Corpse Bride is a title that I suspect I shall come to view more as a demo disc than as something to sit down and watch, since, while the film has its proponents, I can't help seeing it as incredibly disappointing given the strengths of The Nightmare Before Christmas. In terms of audio-visual quality, however, this disc is close to being as good as it gets, and as such, gets my recommendation for the quality of the presentation, if nothing else.

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