Beautiful...but dead...

Saw the Corpse Bride this Friday night with my wife and the whole of the Heckman crew.

The movie is a visual marvel with the animatronic puppets showing subtelties of expression that I have never seen from stop-motion animation at all. Nightmare Before Christmas didn't have "actors" with this level of sophistication, and the old Harryhausen films could never have even dreamed of. There were, in fact, times when I found it hard to believe that Barkis Bittern, in particular, wasn't being acted by a live person. The puppetry was impecible and impressive and amazing.

The sets and scenery were also phenomenal. Little details from the shift in color tone from the world of the living (a beautiful sepia tone) to the world of the dead (a greenish-blue tint) - pointed out to me by the matriarch of the Heckman clan - were subtleties that added to the overall gorgeous look of the film.

The storyline, however, was thin at best. This would have made an outstanding short film or a children's picture book, but stretching it to a 75-minute film left the movie relying on artwork and songs instead of plot and character to keep things moving along.

And the songs were lesser efforts. They were interesting but not catchy, there was nothing to the level of "This is Halloween" or "Oogie Boogie's Song" from Nightmare Before Christmas, and the whole of the group agreed that the choruses were very hard to understand as the music rose and drown out the words - a problem that I noticed when watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this summer.

It's gorgeous and beuatiful, but it's empty and hollow.