CORPSE BRIDE (2005) **1/2 The first thing you have to say is that these Tim Burton/Johnny Depp/Danny Elfman stop-motion animations are very, very clever. The animation is fantastic, the models are spectacular, and the script is feverish in its constant and successful effort to provide amusing one-liners to adorn the most standard clichés in fine new garments. It's difficult not to enjoy, and impossible not to be impressed. Beyond that my concerns sound smaller than they are, like Andy Rooney. Voices are very important in animation, and Burton fills the...not the screen, but you know...with talented sounds. The problem is that so many familiar faces are noted in the opening credits that it becomes a distraction trying to figure out where they are (Which one's Tracey Ullman)? In the end, too, other than Joanna Lumley I can't really point to any voice and say “no one could have done that better.” I think they should have either gone without opening credits, or just gone ahead and told us who was what. My main problem, though, is Elfman. I can't think of anyone else, offhand, whose music gives rise to such contradictory reactions. Some of it is majestic, to the point of being profound. It's easy to discern extensive formal education, and wrong to deny a collaborative genius. Much of it, however, is just too sugary to go down. Not saccharine, there's still something too authentic for that, but just too much of it. So you bombard me with his creations for 90 minutes straight and I'm bound to get irritable and distracted. Which is too bad, because there's a lot of stuff you don't want to miss. It's weird talking about how well the director directed animated characters, but dig Tim's angles and shadows, and just the fluid motion of every movement, and the unique and definitive facial gestures of each character.
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