Partly, if not equally, stop-motion animator Mike Johnson's Corpse Bride, a voguishly grotesque kiddie film in which all the characters look like reflections in fun-house mirrors, and the worm-eaten title figure is not appreciably more ghastly than the living. Indeed the netherworld boasts more color, albeit garishly expressionistic, than the mere blush of color aboveground. Overlong at an hour and a quarter, it features several showstopping musical numbers, not in a good sense but in the sense of clockstopping, and a couple of un-Disneyfied cute critters, a maggot with the eyes and voice of Peter Lorre and a skeletal pet pooch. For all his ghoulishness, the essential innocence, naiveté, even squareness of Burton may be linked to his unshakable faith that the sophomoric cackle will never evolve into a satiated yawn. The climactic rising-up of the dead to walk the face of the earth, like George Romero's zombies but without the appetite, is fairly amusing if you can slough off the descending torpor. With the voices of Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Tracey Ullman, Albert Finney, and Christopher Lee. (2005) — Duncan Shepherd
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