The most winning feature among many in “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride” is to make the afterlife a juke joint where everybody knows your cadaver’s name. It’s no wonder that morose groom Victor seriously ponders staying underground, even though he’s not exactly dead, rather than return to the chilly, gray London mansion of his horrid parents – By Michael Booth for the Denver Post.
Hades under Burton’s puppeteering influence is a friendly small town where the skeleton on the next bar stool pours you a drink and hands you a mop to clean up afterward. Your long dead dog, missing fur but not his personality, wags his bony tail when you show up. Freed of all earthly restraints, the (dead) people are not only nice, they’re decent and vibrant.
Making hell a heckuva good time is the twist that turns Burton’s latest movie as sentimental as it is macabre, and a gore- fest dripping with true love. “Corpse Bride” will win your heart, if it doesn’t rip it out of your chest first.
Copyright 2005 The Denver Post
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