'Corpse Bride' is Tim Burton at his whimsical best

Tim Burton's once brilliant career has floundered in the past decade. His post-"Ed Wood" films -- "Mars Attacks!" "Big Fish," etc. -- have all had their moments, but have mostly come off as forced, overproduced and devoid of the special magic of his earlier work.

MOVIE REVIEW

TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE

DIRECTORS: Tim Burtonand

Mike Johnson

VOCAL CAST: Johnny Depp,

Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson

RUNNING TIME: 76 minutes

RATING: PG for some scary images and action, and brief mild language

GRADE: A-

LINKS/TRAILERS
· Official site

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Some critics considered his summer movie, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," a return to form, but it struck me as another self-conscious effort to be cute on a grand scale. His heart just wasn't in it.

On the other hand, "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" IS an unqualified return to form. It's a spectacular showcase for his particular contribution to cinema and his heart is so much into it that he put his name in the title.

Like his 1993 "The Nightmare Before Christmas," it's a mild-mannered, stop-motion-animated horror film, and its gothic style and raise-the-dead theme harkens back to the film that made his name: the 1984 Disney short, "Frankenweenie."

Set in some black-and-white Neverland of Victorian England, it's the story of Victor (voice of Johnny Depp), a lonely young man whose nouveau riche parents have arranged his marriage with Emily (Emily Watson), the daughter of an impoverished aristocratic family.

When the lad fumbles his wedding rehearsal and wanders into the woods, his practice vows are overheard by the strangely attractive, decaying corpse of a young woman (Helena Bonham Carter), who rises from the ground and accepts his words as an offer of marriage.

She promptly whisks him down to the underworld, a more colorful place where he has all sorts of adventures, meets the frisky ghost of his pet dog, and finds himself torn between a growing fondness for his mistaken wife and a desire to return to the mortal world.

Granted, the premise sounds like it could be some cult-movie bucket of blood destined for the midnighter circuit. But "Corpse Bride" is totally genial and perfectly charming: a family movie in the best sense of the term.

The horror element is played not so much for high camp or jump-out-of-your-seat thrills as a kind of wide-eyed, Halloween innocence. The movie is a funhouse gallery of dancing skeletons, flyaway body parts and Charles Addams-style, trick-or-treat atmospherics.

And the underworld folk -- including a maggot that talks like Peter Lorre and a singing black widow spider -- are not nearly as scary as the living, who (except for Victor and Emily) look like grotesque runaways from a Mr. Potato Head game, and are up to no good.

Like July's "Charlie," the film is a musical, with songs by Danny Elfman. But where the score in that film was annoying and superfluous, the songs here -- several of which have a Gilbert & Sullivan flourish -- advance the story and hit just the right emotional note.

Technically, the film is a seamless piece of puppet animation -- a laborious process that has been making a big comeback in recent years because it offers animators a high-touch alternative to the high-tech intimidations of CGI.

One more good thing is that the movie doesn't overstay its welcome. At 76-minutes, it's wisely calculated to give us as much of its ghoulish whimsy as we can take in one sitting, and not a second more.

P-I movie critic William Arnold can be reached at 206-448-8185 or williamarnold@seattlepi.com.

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