Corpse Bride, 2005.
Directed by Mike Johnson and Tim Burton.
Starring Featuring the voice talents of Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Christopher Lee, Albert Finney, Michael Gough, Tracey Ullman, Joanna Lumley, Richard E. Grant, and Paul Whitehouse.
SYNOPSIS:
Tim Burton and Mike Johnson’s delightful Corpse Bride gets the 4K Ultra HD treatment in time for its 20th anniversary. It looks great, of course, and Warner Bros. commissioned a pair of new bonus features. However, they didn’t port over everything from prior releases, so read on to find out what they missed.
This one has a funny history in my home. When I first showed it to my daughter about 15 years ago, my wife recoiled at the title Corpse Bride and seemed to think I was exposing her to something awful. (Mind you, this is someone who was a punk rocker in the 80s. I wonder if Johnny Rotten is over-protective of his kids (if he has any) too.)
We can laugh about it now, of course, and revisit this one in a home where everyone is 18 or older. Well, I hope we can, since I haven’t broached rewatching this one with my daughter yet. In the meantime, I checked it out again on my own, and yes, it’s just as charming and delightful as it was 20 years ago.
Hailing from Tim Burton, with Mike Johnson coming aboard as co-director and John August, Caroline Thompson, and Pamela Pettler taking care of the screenplay, Corpse Bride stars Johnny Depp as Victor Van Dort, a timid young man engaged to Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson).
Helena Bonham Carter plays Emily, a Corpse Bride who whisks Victor away to the Land of the Dead. After an aborted return to the land of the living, Victoria’s family decides to marry her to someone else, and Victor must figure out how to get back once more. Emily wants him all to herself, of course.
Clocking in at a breezy 77 minutes, Corpse Bride is a fun stop-motion film in the mold of Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. Personally, I think it’s a fine film to show kids, but your mileage may vary.
In celebration of the film’s two-decade anniversary, Warner Bros. has reissued this film in 4K Ultra HD, which is the only disc found in this edition. A code for a digital copy is included too, of course.
On the bonus features front, the studio commissioned a pair of new featurettes and ported over nearly everything from the 2006 Blu-ray. I only had this one on DVD and got rid of it a while back in anticipation of the 4K release, but my understanding is that the isolated Danny Elfman score and the theatrical trailer are missing from this platter.
Here are the extras you’ll find. The first two are new while the others are standard-def bonus features that I assume hail from the original DVD. (It’s been a while since I had that one in a player.)
• Digging Up the Past: The Minds Behind Corpse Bride (8:26): Producer Allison Abbate, screenwriter John August, and co-director Mike Johnson look back on the making of the film, complete with behind-the-scenes footage.
• ’Til Death Do Us Art: A Corpse Bride Reflection (6:18): The trio also pop in for a retrospective on the film that digs deeper into the visuals than the first featurette. I kinda feel like we’re overdue for another movie in this vein, since Burton’s last stop-motion film was 2012’s Frankenweenie.
• Inside the Two Worlds of the Corpse Bride (4:03): A quick look at the contrasts between the world of the living and the Land of the Dead.
• Making Puppets Tick (6:33): An overview of the stop-motion puppets.
• The Animators: The Breath of Life (6:38): Stop-motion is a very laborious way to make a movie, as this featurette makes clear. The results, of course, are pretty much always wonderful.
• The Corpse Bride Pre-Production Galleries (13:28): A deep dive into the storyboards, animatics, and screen tests created during production.
• Tim Burton: Dark vs. Light (3:39): As the title implies, the cast heaps accolades on Burton’s style while he chimes in on why he chose stop-motion animation for this story.
• Voices from the Underworld (5:58): Depp, Carter, and other members of the voice cast do their thing.
• The Voices Behind the Voice (7:36): Tying into the previous extra, this one shows the voice actors at work on one side of the screen and the final version of the scene on the other side.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
