CORPSE BRIDE (4K): Tim Burton's Bag of Tricks

TIM BURTON’S CORPSE BRIDE (4K UHD)

2005 / 77 min

Warner Bros

#InPartnershipwithWB

Review by Mr. Bonniejangles😸

I suppose I should be forthcoming and put out there that I’m not among Tim Burton’s biggest fans. He’s made a few films I really love, but by and large, I never thought he was all that great of a storyteller. 

But I’ll concede that his work was almost always aesthetically interesting, especially the pre-21st Century stuff…before his usual bag of tricks (colorful production design, quasi-gothic flourishes, oddball characters, Danny Elfman score, etc) turned Burton into more of a reliable brand name than a director still interested in artistic growth. 

The exceptions might be a couple of whimsically dark forays into stop-motion animation, starting with 2005’s Corpse Bride (contrary to what a lot of people still mistakenly assume, Burton wrote & produced A Nightmare Before Christmas but didn’t direct it). In a way, Corpse Bride is a welcome return to his roots, when he first got Hollywood’s attention with such stop-motion shorts as Vincent and Frankenweenie.

Though co-directed by Mike Johnson, the tricks in Burton’s bag are still here in abundance (including his choices for voice actors). But this time they’re in service of a narratively slight but charmingly morbid folktale that’s bursting with vivid imagery, from the characters to the worlds in which they exist. With Laika Studios assisting with production, it probably goes without saying that the stop-motion animation is brilliant (which earned an Oscar nomination that year).

Looks like the honeymoon's over.

Corpse Bride features an impressive cast providing the voices, including Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Tracey Ullman, Albert Finney and Christopher Lee. It also boasts another playful Danny Elfman score, along with a few amusing musical numbers that help drive the plot. For the most part, this is all typical Tim Burton, but the animation makes it look and feel a bit fresher than his increasingly rote live action films of the time. And at 77 minutes, at least it doesn’t wear out its welcome.

If there’s ever been a director whose overall body of work screams for the 4K treatment, it’s Burton, and the video/audio transfer for Corpse Bride doesn’t disappoint. I’m still not completely sold on the visual and sonic benefits of 4K for every film, but it’s arguably the best way to appreciate Burton’s aesthetic sensibilities and the meticulousness of stop-motion animation. Additionally, there are a couple of brand new bonus features thrown in with a bunch of supplements from the original 2005 Blu-ray version. 

EXTRA KIBBLES

4K & DIGITAL COPIES

FRESH KIBBLES - Digging Up the Past: The Minds Behind Corpse Bride and ‘Til Death Do Us Part: A Corpse Bride Reflection are a couple of brand new retrospective bonus features.

SEASONED KIBBLES - Danny Elfman Interprets the Two Worlds; The Animators: The Breath of Life; Inside the Two Worlds of Corpse Bride; Voices from the Underworld; The Corpse Bride Pre-Production Galleries; Tim Burton: Dark vs Light; Making Puppets Tick; The Voices Behind the Voice. All the these featurettes are carried over from the 2005 Blu-ray release.