How, then, does this deceased woman become a bride again? It actually begins with Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp), a timid gentleman who is due to participate in an arranged marriage to Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson). The nuptials are a nerve-wracking occasion for Victor – partly because he doesn’t know his intended, and partly because his future in-laws have clearly arranged the marriage for their own financial gain. Once Victor meets Victoria, though, the two find they actually have an attraction to one another. Love quickly blossoms.

At the rehearsal, it becomes painfully clear that Victor cannot remember his vows, so he takes a walk in the woods to practice them aloud. He slips the ring onto what he thinks is a tree branch, only to discover that it’s really the decrepit finger of the Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter). Having been married before and left for dead by her husband, she is thrilled to be married again and forces poor Victor to live up to his “promise.” This means he has to tell Victoria what happened and deal with the aftermath when both sets of parents freak out. Meanwhile, the smug Barkis Bittern (Richard E. Grant) steps in to comfort Victor’s true love in her time of shock.

Corpse Bride was created with 3-dimensional stop-motion animation, just like Tim Burton’s classic The Nightmare Before Christmas. This process has neither the fluidity of traditional hand-drawn animation, nor the realism of computer-generation animation. This, of course, makes it perfect for the kinds of weird, Halloween-y stories Tim Burton likes to tell. There is something about the sheer unreality of the medium that gives it an atmosphere all its own.

That atmosphere works well with the macabre humor. The Corpse Bride takes Victor to the land of the undead, where every resident has some kind of bizarre injury. One guy has a knife stuck through his head; another sports a sword through his midsection. My favorite is the man who literally splits himself in two, with organs hanging out when he does so. This is the sort of dark, slightly demented thing Burton does best. The film also marks another successful pairing with composer Danny Elfman, whose score is the musical equivalent of Burton’s macabre humor.

If there’s a downside, it’s that the animation occasionally overwhelms the story. A musical production number involving dancing skeletons is so dazzling that I wasn’t paying attention to the words, which detailed the Corpse Bride’s backstory. (Thank goodness for video, I guess.) The Nightmare Before Christmas had a very clever story that stood out among the animation; one accentuated the other. That doesn’t quite happen this time – the film doesn’t have a plot so much as a situation.

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is nevertheless worth seeing for its wonderfully weird sense of imagination. Because they are a few steps removed from reality, animated movies are capable of dazzling us in ways that live-action movies can’t. Burton and his crew have once again challenged the medium and come with something appealingly unique.

( out of four)

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is rated PG for some scary images and action, and brief mild language. The running time is 1 hour and 18 minutes.