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Year One
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

Universal acclaim
Based on 35 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 142 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Animation | Comedy | Fantasy
Written by:
John August
Pamela Pettler
Caroline Thompson
Directed by:
Tim Burton
Mike Johnson
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 16, 2005
DVD: January 31, 2006
Running Time: 78 minutes, Color
Origin: UK
Summary
RATING: PG for some scary images and action, and brief mild language
Starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Tracey Ullman, Paul Whitehouse, Joanna Lumley, Albert Finney, and Christopher Lee
Set in a 19th century European village, this stop-motion, animated features follows the story of Victor (Depp), a young man who is whisked away to the underworld and wed to a mysterious Corpse Bride (Bonham-Carter), while his real bride waits bereft in the land of the living. (Warner Bros.)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Batman Beetlejuice Big Fish Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Ed Wood Edward Scissorhands Mars Attacks! Pee-wee's Big Adventure Planet of the Apes Sleepy Hollow Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
A wondrous flight of fancy, a stop-motion-animated treat brimming with imaginative characters, evocative sets, sly humor, inspired songs and a genuine whimsy that seldom finds its way into today's movies.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
But the real marvel is that beneath the ghoulish in-jokes and horror-geek allusions, there's a core of the same bittersweet truth that makes the best fairy tales resonate from one generation to the next.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
A lush, modern valentine to old-fashioned sentiment, and to old-fashioned moviemaking, too.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
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.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson
Like all Burton's best work, it takes place in a distorted, vividly colored, meticulously crafted world where whimsy and gleeful ghoulishness mix freely.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
The movie is so Burtonesque that it verges on self-parody--but it's fun and stunningly beautiful anyway.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
This stop-action animated feature is downright sweet and tender, as well as all the other things we've come to expect from him -- funny, bizarre, graphically stunning and blithely necrophilic.
Variety Justin Chang
An endearingly schizoid Frankenstein of a movie, by turns relentlessly high-spirited and darkly poignant.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Corpse Bride never skimps on the sass (as a good folktale shouldn't). And the variety of its cadaverous style is never less than inspired; never has the human skull's natural grin been redeployed so exhaustively for yuks.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
It's warped and wonderfully effervescent. Ditto the songs by Danny Elfman, who sings the role of Bonejangles, the frontman for a skeleton jazz band at a swinging underworld club. Best of all is the love story.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Ghoulishness and innocence walk hand-in-hand in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, a movie that digs into Hollywood's past to resurrect the antique art of stop-motion animation and create a fabulous bauble of a movie.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Features the season's most tragic heroine along with some of the liveliest dead people ever seen on film.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Will be hailed for its macabre imagination and inventive farce. But it also elegantly renders an archetypal teenage tale.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Burton, who directed the film with animator Mike Johnson, has rarely been in brisker, friskier form.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder
If "Nightmare" was a jazzy pop number, "Bride" is a waltz--an elegant, deadly funny bit of macabre matrimony.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Easily the best stop-motion animated necrophiliac musical romantic comedy of all time. It is also just simply, wonderful: a morbid, merry tale of true love that dazzles the eyes and delights the soul.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Such a treat for the eyes, ears and funny bone that you feel cheated that it clocks in at less than an hour-and-a-quarter.
Read Full Review >Empire Staff (Not credited)
A precious thing, if likely to please refined aesthetes and odd children rather than win over Pixar-sized crowds.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
This may be light family entertainment, but it's also a pleasingly perverse celebration of Victorian morbidity.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
A visual triumph, and also a work of surprising warmth. No small accomplishment for a bunch of cadavers.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
There is something heartening about Mr. Burton's love for bones and rot here, if only because it suggests, despite some recent evidence, that he is not yet ready to abandon his own dark kingdom.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
The dead have more fun than the living, again, in Tim Burton’s new stop-motion animated feature, a gift to gothlings everywhere and as exquisitely crafted as one of Federico’s post-mortem still lifes on "Six Feet Under," and just as melodramatically melancholic.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Not the macabre horror story the title suggests, but a sweet and visually lovely tale of love lost.
Read Full Review >Premiere Ryan Devlin
The Poe-esque story, the wonderfully twisted physical geometry of the characters, and the director’s signature sense of humor, combine to make Corpse Bride a fun movie, and one that breathes life not only into stop motion, but into animation as a whole.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
As animated films go, this is easily the best of a weak year.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
As an achievement in macabre visual wizardry, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride has to be reckoned some sort of marvel.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Teresa Wiltz
For all its charm, we can't quite figure out for whom the film is intended: Talking maggots and decaying bodies do not a kiddie movie make.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Populated by all kinds of grinning skeletons and decomposing zombies, but in Burton's universe, they aren't the slightest bit threatening. It's the drab, flesh-and-blood living you have to worry about.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Mark Olsen
There is much clattering and clanking plus a couple of songs; some of the gothic-inspired, neo-Victorian visuals are quite arresting; and the corpse bride herself is, dare one say, surprisingly hot. But the whole thing just isn’t much fun.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Corpse Bride has more warmth and appeal than its title would indicate, but it is finally more grotesque than good-humored. And, even at 75 minutes, it feels longer than its content can comfortably support.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 142 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Aaron G. gave it a5:
I've been looking forward to seeing this movie for a while, but I was really looking forward to not much. The movie, itself, reminds me a lot of Tim Burton's extremely celebrated Nightmare before Christmas. However, I was crushed about halfway into the rather short movie by boring, uninteresting characters, a twist ending that only an idiot couldn't see coming, and music that just doesn't quite hit the high note. It makes me very sad to say this movie was very "ok", but the fact is that it's just too much like it's main character. Short, timid, and vaguely uninteresting. If there's one thing I have to praise, it's the excellent atmosphere and animation. Otherwise, I have not much but disappointment for this movie. Oh, and it was really fun watching the blu ray disc freeze up. I sent for another one, but that one froze up too. Coincidence?
Devon S gave it a7:
Who would've thought that the love story of a timid man and a corpse would touch our hearts?
[Anonymous] gave it a10:
The best off all the stop-animation movies. Incredible. I had to watch it all week and I didn't get sick of it.
Amy C. gave it a10:
This is the best movie that i have even seen, in my option it is MUCH better than the nightmare before Christmas. i do not understand why people are judging the two movies they are totally different. sure they are Tim Burton's movies but still you don't see a skeleton trying to kidnap Christmas in the corpse bride and you don't see a man marrying a corpse in the nightmare before Christmas. overall I LOVE THIS MOVIE
Deanna H gave it an8:
A really good movie i like it a lot. I like Johnny Depp a lot!!!
Velour gave it a4:
This movie, like Burton's " Nightmare Before Christmas" has a familiar style, but the storyline doesn't intrigue me enough to watch 75 minutes. I found it to be less capturing than Nightmare. But, it is better than the title suggest's.
Claus V. gave it a10:
Stop-motion animation may be a dinosaur, but can still be technically superb. I didn't believe they used real puppets in this film. Very good plot and characters. Fell in love with the Corpse Bride -what a sweet, unselfconsciously erotic darling! I would happily die to marry her and play four-hand classic piano without a score for eternity!
