It's very lovely. Not often magical, but lovely. It has a good script. It's a simpler more muted style than Nightmare, and though it pays homage in some ways (the dog, for example), I don't think it's a rip-off. It's based on a fable. It's simple like a fable. It nods its head to Poe and Gorey. The voice work is excellent. And I think, over all, it's worth the price of admission.
That being said, the score was very pretty, and if it had been just a score I would have been pleased. But as a musical it fails miserably. The songs don't move the plot along at all. They are exposition and the lyrics are not Elfman's best, nor is the music that accompanies them. I left the theater and couldn't remember a single song. Nothing stuck. There wasn't even a real duet between any of the main characters. So strange. There is, however, a beautiful and wonderful little moment at a piano between Victor and The Corpse Bride. I loved that scene.
The characters are swell, save Victoria, who's kind of just there. Sweet, but...well...about as light gray and toneless as her color design. The problem is that no one is really a strong enough personality to make up for a lack of backstory. The movie just begins, almost as if it's the start of the 2nd act. You really know - nor are you given any details later - who Victor is. He's sweet and cute and plenty a goth teenager will swoon after him, but we don't know what makes him tic really. What are his great dreams? Who would he be in a less repressed society. Also, none of the characters really experience a significant metamorphosis, and maybe it's cool to buck that theatrical contrivance (the characters must enter a crisis and exit a stronger, better person!), but now I kind of understand why more people *don't* buck that contrivance. I suppose, however, that a couple of the characters learn to do the right thing. And Victor becomes a bit more firm and confident.
I think what I'd expected was that the Underworld would spill over into the Living world and color their dull lives up a bit. Make them less stuffy. Bring the party to the Victorians. And that's not really what happened. It's a bit more like The Wizard of Oz. You can take the girl out of Kansas, but you cannot take Kansas out of the girl. At the end of the film, it's back to the Grey place, and none of Oz's color really comes to stay. Perhaps we can imagine, in The Corpse Bride, that this isn't the case, but the movie ends without us ever knowing how Victor's strange experiences might have improved their world for the better.
Oh, and the villain need a LOT more backstory. He needed to be a LOT scarier and a LOT more interesting than he was. Also, less obvious. You know right away who the bastard is and I couldn't tell why they'd want us to know that for the entire movie. Especially when there's a moment where the Corpse Bride is shocked to recognize him, and it might have been better for the audience if we felt the shock, too. And I couldn't help thinking, "No one would fall for this guy. He's obviously EVIL." But Richard Grant did delightful voice work for him.
The color scheme was appropriate, though I couldn't help - at times while in the land of the living - but pray for a dash of red at times. Everything is so pale and grey and white and sometimes my eyes were just kind of glazed over.
Still, it didn't really detract from the loveliness, or the fact that I even have a desire to see the film again, now knowing what to expect.
People will want to hold this film up to Nightmare for obvious reasons, but I don't think that's fair to The Corpse Bride, really. It's its own thing. I don't think it tries to recreate the magic of its predecessor. Its trying to use similar technology to tell a very different, much more subtle and simple and quiet story. This story will not have the mass appeal that Nightmare had, which benefited by creating a world that borrowed from two beloved holidays. Many people, I suspect, will be bored. But the audience I was with seemed delighted. And, like them, I laughed out loud a lot, because I really was charmed by the dialogue. I would have preferred it to be a simple talkie feature with some pretty classical music - be done with those forgettable songs, I say!
But I am looking forward to seeing it again and I do recommend the film. Those who think they won't like it probably won't, though.
