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OK, that's not really true.
We saw The Corpse Bride over the weekend. It's no Nightmare Before Christmas, but it's good. Stunning visuals, but I thought the plot was a little thin, and the whole thing gave off just the faintest vibe of Tim-Burton-on-autopilot. Burton's the best there is at the whole Goreyesque macabre whimsy thing, but the problem is, he's been doing it so well and for so long that I'm not sure there's anywhere left to go with it. It's probably unfair to compare Corpse Bride with Nightmare Before Christmas, because the thing about NBC was that there had never been anything that looked like it before. Corpse Bride is perfectly lovely and entertaining, but it really doesn't break any new ground. Even the Danny Elfman songs seemed a bit perfunctory.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the film and I'll probably go see it again. I'll even buy the DVD. You don't often see a film that's such an absolute visual feast. I thought the characterizations were pitch-perfect--ever-so-slightly exaggerated without going completely over the top--with first-rate performances by the voice actors. I liked the sense of longing and melancholy that suffuses all of the relationships.
It's actually too bad Corpse Bride had to be released when it was. There can be only one King Of The Animated Films, and this year, it'll be Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
We saw The Corpse Bride over the weekend. It's no Nightmare Before Christmas, but it's good. Stunning visuals, but I thought the plot was a little thin, and the whole thing gave off just the faintest vibe of Tim-Burton-on-autopilot. Burton's the best there is at the whole Goreyesque macabre whimsy thing, but the problem is, he's been doing it so well and for so long that I'm not sure there's anywhere left to go with it. It's probably unfair to compare Corpse Bride with Nightmare Before Christmas, because the thing about NBC was that there had never been anything that looked like it before. Corpse Bride is perfectly lovely and entertaining, but it really doesn't break any new ground. Even the Danny Elfman songs seemed a bit perfunctory.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the film and I'll probably go see it again. I'll even buy the DVD. You don't often see a film that's such an absolute visual feast. I thought the characterizations were pitch-perfect--ever-so-slightly exaggerated without going completely over the top--with first-rate performances by the voice actors. I liked the sense of longing and melancholy that suffuses all of the relationships.
It's actually too bad Corpse Bride had to be released when it was. There can be only one King Of The Animated Films, and this year, it'll be Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
