A dead charming tale

Corpse Bride
Venice Film Festival

Skeletons rattle, putrefied flesh comes back to life, eyes pop out of sockets and there's a pool table in the shape of a coffin.

But no one gets too scared because this is Tim Burton's latest animated fantasy, and he has a child's innocent eye, even if an expert adult's skill.

Corpse Bride, based on an old Jewish-Russian folk tale, takes us on a journey that, even at its most Gothic moments, is meant to charm rather than chill.

The technique is stopmotion using plasticine figures, like puppets without strings, and it achieves figures, faces and expressions that would have been impossible a decade ago when the method was either unheard of or much less advanced.

The tale is about a young fiancé whose pretty bride turns into a dead, witchlike figure whom it looks as if he'll have to marry. It all comes right at the end - but only just.

The slight story has been made into a grotesque and macabre, but lighttoned musical fantasy similar to Burton's previous Nightmare Before Christmas, with music and songs from Danny Elfman.

It's voiced by Helena Bonham Carter (Burton's partner), Johnny Depp, a Burton regular, Emily Watson and Christopher Lee, among a host of mostly British actors.

There are moments of pure magic which remind one of Disney at his best, such as when the bride and groom play a duet on the piano and one of the bride's pale, dry hands detaches itself from her arm and plays the notes on its own; the land of the dead, it seems, is more fun than the grey land of the living.

Fun it remains, however much Burton and Mike Johnson, his animator along with some 20 others, seem to be trying for poetic horror. The director who brought us Edward Scissorhands and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory seems incapable of turning a dream into a real nightmare, being just a bit of a softie at heart.