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.

Dallas ObserverBill Gallo

Not just great fun but high art. Read full review

Rolling StonePeter 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

USA TodayClaudia Puig

Features the season's most tragic heroine along with some of the liveliest dead people ever seen on film. Read full review

New York Daily NewsJack Mathews

The story itself is a smooth little gem. Read full review

New York PostLou Lumenick

An instant classic. 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

Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman

Corpse Bride had me at the maggot. Read full review

Philadelphia InquirerSteven 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

Baltimore SunMichael Sragow

Will be hailed for its macabre imagination and inventive farce. But it also elegantly renders an archetypal teenage tale. Read full review

Wesley Morris

Burton, who directed the film with animator Mike Johnson, has rarely been in brisker, friskier form. Read full review

Chicago TribuneRobert K. Elder

If "Nightmare" was a jazzy pop number, "Bride" is a waltz--an elegant, deadly funny bit of macabre matrimony. Read full review

Portland OregonianShawn 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

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

Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar

A visual triumph, and also a work of surprising warmth. No small accomplishment for a bunch of cadavers. Read full review

Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones

This may be light family entertainment, but it's also a pleasingly perverse celebration of Victorian morbidity. Read full review

EmpireStaff (Not credited)

A precious thing, if likely to please refined aesthetes and odd children rather than win over Pixar-sized crowds. Read full review

Austin ChronicleMarc 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

ReelViewsJames Berardinelli

As animated films go, this is easily the best of a weak year. Read full review

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

PremiereRyan 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

Roger Ebert

Not the macabre horror story the title suggests, but a sweet and visually lovely tale of love lost. Read full review

San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein

Deliriously original. Read full review

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 HeraldRene 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

L.A. WeeklyMark 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 TimesKenneth 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