Corpse Bride (2005) - Impressive, loud, hollow, dark doll fairytale

♥♥♥

A very bright full moon behind the leading characters of Tim Burton and Mike Johnson's Corpse Bride

QUICK REVIEW:

A young man in a Victorian-era, uptight European village is forced to marry, but when he stumbles in his vows, he accidentally opens the grave of a miserable bride, who promptly marries him. - But what is then right? - Or least wrong?

The first 15 minutes of Corpse Bride are enthusiastic and lots of fun, - before SPOILER the death world comes to life in booming colors and songs and continues like this for almost the entire remainder of the film.
My mind soon got tired from the heady bombardment of compact dialog, songs and fast editing, (as was the case with the related The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)). And Corpse Bride continues to amuse, but without resulting in actual laughs.
What's just as bad; it is without thematic meaning: Corpse Bride is pure fairytale surface, essentially about nothing.
But the dolls in it are unbelievably good-looking, the characters are original, and the lighting, colors and designs are staggering. - Doll stop-motion is a wonderful thing, but alas, Corpse Bride, with its just 77 minutes playtime, still feels long.
The film is written by John August (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)), Caroline Thompson (The Adams Family (1991)) and Pamela Pettler (Monster House (2006)) (with characters by Tim Burton (Batman Returns (1992)) and Carlos Grangel (Hotel Transylvania (2012), character designer) and co-directed by Burton and Mike Johnson (The Devil Went Down to Georgia (1996), short).
Burton is busy at the moment shooting his next film, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016) a fantasy adventure with Asa Butterfield as the protagonist.

Related reviews:

Tim Burton: Dark Shadows (2012) - Fun, flamboyant vampire romp is a celebration of culture
Batman Returns (1992) - Burton gives us the ultimate, Gothic spin on Gotham City and its sinister characters
Batman (1989) - A huge, glitzy, empty joker
Beetle Juice (1988) - Burton and team serve one of the best horror comedies ever 

Watch the original trailer for the film here

Cost: 40 mil. $
Box office: 117.2 mil. $
= Box office success
[Corpse Bride opened # 2 in the US behind Flightplan (2005) and made 53.3 mil. $ there (45 % of the total gross). Its best foreign markets were France, the UK and Japan with 8.8 mil. $, 8.5 mil. $ and 7.1 mil. $, respectively. The film was Oscar-nominated as Best Animated Film, but lost to Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). It subsequently made 114.7 mil. $ on DVD and Blueray sales in North America alone.]

What do you think of Corpse Bride?

Coraline (2009) - Selick's otherworldly masterpiece

♥♥♥♥♥♥

+ 3rd Best Movie of the Year

The fantasy-inspiring, great poster for Henry Selick's Coraline

Coraline's parents have moved her to a new, large house. There's only one nerdy playmate in the neighborhood, until Coraline finds that there is a different, wildly adventurous world hiding inside the house...

Coraline is not a conventional kids animation with a clear moral, but instead a visually magnificent, fairytale-like horror so crazily created that I almost couldn't believe that it existed, as I saw it first. - The colors (which go from B/W to color), the designs and the seamless mix of techniques (like puppet stop-motion, digital compositing and CGI) will knock you out of your couch in amazement.
Coraline is unusually rich on originality and real, nightmarish horror, (meaning also that it isn't appropriate for kids under age 6-8, depending on the child.)
The voices, by Dakota Fanning (The Motel Life (2012)), Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives (2004-12)), Ian McShane (Deadwood (2004-06)), John Hodgman (Mozart in the Jungle (2014-)), Jennifer Saunders (Shrek 2 (2004)), Keith David (Requiem for a Dream (2000)) etc., are also lively and inspired. Inspired is the word that most defines Coraline, which is also very odd and surreal.
Henry Selick (James and the Giant Peach (1996)) adapted Neil Gaiman's (Stardust (1999)) 2002 novel and directed the film. He also directed the successful, (yet grating) The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), which many (wrongfully, also due to wrongful advertisement) think that Tim Burton directed, - he didn't.

Related posts:

2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Top 10: The best adaptations reviewed by Film Excess to date
Top 10: The best adventure movies reviewed by Film Excess to date  

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 60 mil. $
Box office: 124.5 mil. $
= Minor flop
[Coraline came in 3rd in the US with a 16.8 mil. $ opening weekend. Its US run ended at 75.2 mil. $ (60 % of the total gross), - meaning that it was mostly outside America that Coraline should have been better welcomed. It was Oscar- and Globe-nominated as Best Animation, (unfortunately losing to Pete Docter's Up). Coraline eventually became commercially successful with DVD sales (45 mil. $ profit), a video game and soundtrack.]

What do you think of Coraline?