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CORPSE BRIDE
 If you thought the remarriage of Tim Burton and stop motion animation sounded like a match made in Hollywood heaven, you're not alone. After Burton delighted audiences, especially this critic, with his sweet, macabre masterpiece "The Nightmare Before Christmas" in 1993, any project which involved the director and a mound of clay would have seemed like a good idea.
Sadly "Corpse Bride" doesn't
deliver.
With its B-movie storyline-a bumbling and
ineffectual groom-to-be accidentally hitches himself to a corpse before
he can marry his flesh and blood intended-this film is little more than
a mass of tepid jokes and dull song numbers; sadly, it doesn't recall
any of the delightfully dark comedy that "Christmas" did.
Like any good Tim Burton film, "The
Nightmare Before Christmas" blended the director's dark
sensibilities with his unique appreciation for the innocence of
childhood. In many ways Burton has always seemed like a Goth teenager
with a decidedly sweet streak underneath the black cloths and satanic
posturing.
His best films-"Nightmare," "Batman," "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure," "Edward Scissorhands" and, to a lesser extent, "Beetlejuice" and "Sleepy Hollow"-take you to dark places but always drop you off in a better, sweeter, happier place.
As a result, no one does campy sweetness as
honestly and fiendishly as Burton does. And, because he's managed to
build a Hollywood career by making a steady stream of offbeat and
bizarre movies, he's always had a special place in my heart. Good or bad,
"Corpse Bride" does bring a smile to the face if only because it
signals that, somewhere, a studio exec green lit an animated feature
that stars a bunch of awkwardly-moving clay figures.
Tim Burton history aside, "Corpse Bride"
doesn't look or feel as fresh and exciting as it should. Though the
uptight, society world of the film-the characters appear in some
subverted Edith Wharton world where class concerns trump all others-is,
at times, beautifully evoked through clay, it mostly feels too
restrictive and looks too dull.
Shifting back and forth between the small
town where our groom, Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp), lives with
his nouveau riche parents, and the underworld of the titular bride (Helena
Bonham Carter), the film doesn't do doom and gloom nearly as
sprightly as "Nightmare" did. What "Corpse Bride" lacks is a
vivaciousness that even Bonham Carter's sweet-natured skeleton-she
offers a convivial chuckle every time her resident maggot pops out her
eyeball-can't deliver.
That the land of the living looks even more
depressing than that of the dead is no accident, clearly, but even the
underworld here isn't much fun.
s skeletons dance and steaming potions are
poured, the jokes fall flat along with the notes. The whole film seems
slightly off key, as if Burton had the vision for the film without the
story or characters to support it.
Grade: C
OLIVER TWIST
 When I heard Roman Polanski was making "Oliver Twist," my initial thought was: What's the point? The Dickens story, which is a fine one, has been filmed numerous times, and it didn't seem like there was much need in the world for yet another version. That said Polanski's first film off his unexpected Oscar win (for Best Director for "The Pianist") is a finely acted, well-shot family film. Newcomer Barney Clark is delightful as the well-meaning, mistreated little orphan, but Ben Kingsley steals the show as the malevolent, miserly Fagin.
For adults who likely know the story-young
Oliver, an orphan who gets kicked out of his orphanage and makes his way
to London where he falls in with a band of young pickpockets who work
for a hideous hunchback named Fagin; the key target here is youngsters
who will undoubtedly latch onto the tale for the first time.
And Polanski, for his part, does most with
the cast and setting. His early 19th century London comes alive through
its evocation of the haves and have-nots. Like the director's vision of
Warsaw in "The Pianist," which went from a flourishing metropolis to a
bombed-out deserted city, his evocation of London is equally stunning
here.
rom the dirty side streets and tenements
where Fagin and his gang live to the upscale mansions on the outskirts
of the city, Polanski's little snapshot of this city never looks like a
California back lot. (The director shot the film largely in Prague.)
The story, which follows Oliver as he hunts
for a place to call home and runs-in with a series of callous and
dangerous adults, is best when it portrays the strange bond between the
orphan and Fagin.
As played by Kingsley, the wretch is as
pathetic as he is cruel. Sending out his gang of young whores and
pickpockets to collect food, money and whatever else they can steal,
Fagin presides over a dysfunctional little family that Oliver falls into
for better and worse. That Fagin is part abuser and part father, and
that the film exposes this, is what's most interesting.
That Polanski had experience being young
and alone in a big city is also of note. The director, who escaped the
Warsaw ghetto-his parents were taken to concentration camp during World
War II-wandered the Polish countryside and learned, like Oliver, to take
charity where he could find it.
In the light of the director's own past, the film takes on more meaning that as yet another adaptation of a familiar Dickens tale. Grade: B |
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