Buy it... if you cherish every moment of Danny Elfman's melancholy string and choir themes, and are interested in a more consistent extension of those heartbreaking sounds.

Avoid it... if you enjoyed the songs in the comparable The Nightmare Before Christmas, for Corpse Bride suffers from weak songs and no solo performances by Elfman himself.

Elfman

Corpse Bride: (Danny Elfman) There must be some kind of mental condition that describes the specific derangement that director Tim Burton suffers that causes him to be so fascinated with graceful portrayals of death and stark realities. His stop motion animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas, considered an anomaly at the time, turned out to not only be a rare singularity in modern film, but also a mass cult favorite. Its catering to both the morbid symbols of the underworld and boundlessly hopeful worlds of different holidays combined with Danny Elfman's popular musical numbers to create, at the very least, a very memorable piece of entertainment. Despite the great following that The Nightmare Before Christmas has continued to build, it took Burton and Elfman a dozen years before resurrecting the same stop motion/musical formula. While it's by no means a sequel to the previous hit, the common treatment of macabre underworld elements, as well as its existence in various shades of gray, along with Elfman's similarly conceived musical ideas causes Corpse Bride to be largely an extension of the same concept. Traversing both the worlds of the living and dead, with multiple weddings of an old-English style, Burton's fantasy challenges viewers with a drab, colorless portrayal of the real world (as real as the stop motion and bizarre 3-D miniature sets can allow) in contrast to a significantly livelier, more colorful existence in the afterlife. The love triangle that exists between the three primary characters is accented by Burton's usual flair for stereotyped auxiliary characters, and these folks once again have a major role to play in the songs for Corpse Bride. Danny Elfman obviously flourishes in this environment, not only writing in perpetually somber tones, but also with the chorus and instrumentation of choice for a maximum emotional effect.

The base sound for Corpse Bride is nearly identical to The Nightmare Before Christmas (why mess with something that worked?), and the concept of high-energy ensemble cast songs returns as well. So faithful to the previous score's structure is Elfman that we even get the New Orleans jazz and blues treatment for the underworld characters, a 180 turn from the harpsichord-laced pseudo classical environment of the "real" world. The only major difference between The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride is that the latter film devalues its musical song side by striking the idea of a narration by the primary character. Without the narrative in the songs as Jack Skellington had provided, Corpse Bride's songs exist without any connection to each other and have no central voice. The two wedding preparation songs ("According to Plan" and "The Wedding Song") are creatively juxtaposed in their other-worldly treatments of the ceremonies, but the performers speak their roles for the most part, and the themes Elfman bases them upon can't carry the lack of strong vocals. The "Remains of the Day" song is the "fun" piece of the film, although Elfman's better frenetic vocal performances exist in the more consistently better "Wedding Song." The only truly redeeming song is "Tears to Shed," in which the corpse bride offers her lament (courtesy of Helena Bonham Carter) with a longing reminiscent of Sally's song in the previous film. Other than the beautiful corpse bride vocals in that song, the themes within the songs won't be as memorable for fans and it's doubtful that they'll stick with audiences after the closing credits of the film. The lyrics, mostly coined by Elfman once again himself, are further evidence of his perverse and subversive talents, and exist as the best aspect of the songs. In Burton's world, it's no doubt that breathing is definitely "overrated."

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Whereas the songs in The Nightmare Before Christmas easily stole the show from the relatively minor amount of score in that film, Corpse Bride relies far more heavily on the magic of its orchestral score to accentuate the raw emotions in the story. The themes from the songs don't occupy the majority of the score's time, either, which harms the songs but allows Elfman's score here to stand alone as a piece warranting attention. Aside from the rambling of jazz periodically, the score is subdued and respectful, beautiful and heartbreaking. Setting aside the mixture of electronics and orchestra used through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory earlier in the year, Elfman approaches Corpse Bride with the piano and harpsichord as central elements to a traditional orchestra and choir. The several calming underscore cues tingle with the percussion of Edward Scissorhands while the more playful cues whip the strings into a frenzy a la Beetlejuice and the two action pieces belt out brass so harsh and resolute that only a reference to Sleepy Hollow can be made. Unlike the many melancholy Elfman scores of this sort that are highly inconsistent listening experiences, Corpse Bride deviates from that trend and stays a steady course; the downfall to this consistency is that Elfman never really does pull off a full-fledged crescendo of string and choir beauty, though the finale here does excel to a more moderate degree. The album ends with several jazz and blues extras by Elfman and his band. In the end, Corpse Bride suffers because it inevitably must be compared to The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Corpse Bride fails in two important aspects of comparison: first, the weakness and infrequency of the songs, and, not to be overlooked, the lack of Elfman's own performing voice, which is more enjoyable then even his deviant manipulations of voice for ensemble pieces. Then again, his score here is superior, and will provide several splendid pieces to extend the agony in the heart of any die-hard Elfman fanatic. ***

Bias Check:

For Danny Elfman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.14 (in 42 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.28 (in 93,536 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.