Corpse Bride
Director: Tim Burton
(Warner Bros.)

It's difficult to discuss Corpse Bride, Tim Burton's love letter to stop-motion animation, without making some kind of comparison to 1993's Nightmare Before Christmas. And why not? Though the director's chair for that earlier stop-motion feature was filled by Henry Selick (James and the Giant Peach, Monkeybone), Burton's stamp was literally all over the picture; from the wildly Expressionist world and Edward Gorey-esque character designs to Danny Elfman's distinctive score. What's more, there's a lot in Corpse Bride for fans of Nightmare to love, especially when we leave the land of the living behind and journey to the twisted, carnivalesque shanty town of Burton's afterlife. But the comparison also does a major disservice to the new film, bringing to light a deficiency that just can't be ignored: simply put, Corpse Bride is not as good a movie as Nightmare Before Christmas. Its world seems less fully realized, its imagery (with some exceptions) less potent. The plot is sufficient enough - certainly for a movie which clocks in significantly under 90 minutes - but its characters lack depth. Even Elfman's score, like much of his recent work, seems flat, uninspired, less memorable than the songs from Nightmare.

Chalk it up to nostalgia, perhaps. Because if any one word can describe the dominant mood of Corpse Bride, a classic special effects movie in the Pixar age, it's nostalgia. Burton and crew drop references to cinema yesteryear left and right: Disney classic The Skeleton Dance, Peter Lorre, Caligari, even Burton's own work (that oddly sparse, straight-trunked eerie forest look familiar?). Most entertainingly of all, a close-up of a piano in one scene reveals a bronze plate emblazoned with the name "Harryhausen." It's loving touches of detail like these that bring the film to life; and make no mistake, at its best Corpse Bride is a truly vibrant film, unafraid to relish in its own good-natured ghoulishness with the childlike enthusiasm Tim Burton does so well. Skeletons drink wine, only for the liquid to spill right through their ribcages. A French-accented severed head (complete with thin mustache) waits tables, propelled by the cockroach-like insects which infest his stump of a neck. Regularly, the eyeball of the corpse bride herself (voiced gamely by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's Helena Bonham Carter) pops out of its socket and rolls around on the floor; in one scene, she begins to frolic through the forest, only for one of her legs - the one without any flesh - to crack off and remain upright on the ground.