After last weekend’s successful launch in a few select theaters in New York and Los Angeles, Tim Burton’s stop-motion animated romantic musical comedy, Corpse Bride, opens nationwide today. Co-directed by Mike Johnson, the Warner Bros. release is one of the highest-rated new entries on film critic compendium rottentomatoes.com, and should show strong legs through Halloween.
Based on a 19th century Eastern European folk tale, Corpse Bride stars Oscar nominee Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Sleepy Hollow) as the voice of Victor, a young man who is about to be wed when he is whisked away to the underworld and married to the mysterious Corpse Bride, voiced by Helena Bonham-Carter (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit). Frightened of her at first, Victor warms up to his departed spouse and finds himself torn between two worlds. Emily Watson (Equilibrium, Punch Drunk Love) provides the voice of Victoria, Victor’s fiancée who pines away for him in the land of the living.
Corpse Bride was animated in England under animation supervisor Anthony Scott, who worked with Burton on his 1993 stop-mo opus, The Nightmare Before Christmas. The puppet armatures were machined by Merrick Cheney, and fabricators Mackinnon & Saunders in Manchester, England, crafted mechanical heads that allowed the animators to bring more expression and fluid lip sync to the characters. And while the majority of the feature was done with stop-motion, The Moving Picture Co. added some CG elements here and there.
As Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Warner Independent’s hit documentary, March of the Penguins, recede from theaters, Corpse Bride is well-positioned to draw in the family crowd, but its gothic themes and edgy humor should also appeal to the teen and college set. Also opening in wide release today are Buena Vista’s airborne thriller, Flight Plan, and FoxSearchlight’s roller boogie flashback, Roll Bounce.
Read more about the making of Corpse Bride in the September issue of Animation Magazine, and check out our reactions to the movie at www.animationmagazine.net/article.php?article_id=4474. <
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