It might be a peculiar family – perhaps the Addamses – that enjoys “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride” ($28.98) together, but the director’s latest stop-motion animation effort is loaded with ghoulishly delightful pleasures.
The story, based on a Russian-Jewish folk tale, is set in some bizarre Victorian world and involves an arranged marriage between a clunky but musical young man, Victor (voiced by Johnny Depp), of ambitious and rich upwardly mobile parents and the shy, nearly cloistered daughter, Victoria (Emily Watson), of an upper-class family needing money.
The parents – the bride’s voiced by Albert Finney and Joanna Lumley, the groom’s by Tracey Ullman and Paul Whitehouse – have their motives, but the youngsters want to breathe and experience love. Victor and Victoria click upon meeting, but the pressure for the socially unsure groom proves too much.
Fleeing into the woods to practice his vows, he accidentally unearths some magic in the form of a young woman murdered and betrayed by her groom on what she thought was to be her wedding day. Vowing to wait until someone else came along, she emerges from the ground when Victor makes a practice proposal, placing a ring on a small branch.
Curvaceous and alluring – except for those places where her body has decayed to bone and a right eye that pops out now and then – the Bride (Helena Bonham Carter) takes Victor back to her underworld, which is much livelier than the gray atmosphere above.
In this colorful world below, which resembles the art and grave wit of a Mexican Day of the Dead celebration, bone men and cadavers with missing parts – or, in the case of the French “head” waiter, all of his body – dance and sing to Danny Elfman’s manic songs.
Enjoyable chick flick
Curtis Hanson has made some interesting zig-zags in his career, from the noirish thriller “L.A. Confidential” to the loopy, comic “Wonder Boys” to gritty rap tale “8 Mile.”
Now he has taken Jennifer Weiner’s novel “In Her Shoes” ($29.98) as source material for what is a trip into chick-flick land. Sisters Maggie (Cameron Diaz) and Rose (Toni Collette) are opposites in every way – Maggie is jobless, seductive, promiscuous but insecure; Rose is a lawyer, frumpy and lonely, who buys herself sexy shoes when she’s depressed. When Rose catches house-guest Maggie in bed with her temporary boyfriend and her stilettos, she throws her sister out of the apartment.
After being tossed out, Maggie looks for her grandmother (Shirley MacLaine), who she didn’t know even existed until she discovered some letters by accident. As Maggie begins to find herself in her thorny relationship with her grandmother, Rose begins, in fits and starts, to learn about herself while finding a man who appreciates her.
Diaz and Collette create some chemistry as mismatched sisters, and MacLaine is always a welcome presence. While “In Her Shoes” has some formulaic stuff, Hanson steers clear of obvious sentimentality and has come up with a chick flick that most guys won’t mind seeing.
NEW On DVD
Just Like Heaven * 1/2 Leaving “Just Like Heaven” is like finishing a rice cake – there’s not much to remember about the experience one way or the other. Full of romantic-comedy puffery and little real comedy, the movie tries to ride on Reese Witherspoon’s cuteness and Marc Ruffalo’s edgy good looks. Most laughs come from seeing “Napoleon Dynamite” star Jon Heder. PG-13; 90 minutes (Michael Booth)
Elizabethtown * Cameron Crowe seems to be losing his ear for writing dialogue, as this Orlando Bloom vehicle has far more soul in the soundtrack than in the script. Bloom, fired from a high-profile job, must go home to Kentucky to pick up his late father’s body. The town is eccentric and cute, as is love interest Kirsten Dunst. None of the scenes ring true with anything more than sickly sweet nostalgia, presented without evidence or substance. PG-13; 117 minutes (Michael Booth)
Doom * 1/2 That “Doom” is dumb comes as no great shock. That The Rock continues to try to build a movie persona beyond one-note hulking action hero is no surprise. That he fails at every turn … well, you weren’t expecting Brando in “On the Waterfront,” were you? The latest video-game-turned-action-movie sticks to the essentials of the source material, Marines blowing away zombies and mutant monsters on Mars. And it doesn’t bring much more to it. R; 104 minutes (David Germain, The Associated Press)
Waiting ** 1/2 Written and directed by a former waiter, “Waiting” is a raunchy, rude, “Old School”-
style look at the world of the waiting and the waited upon. It’s a knowing and often very funny peek behind those swinging kitchen doors and into the swinging after-hours life in the chain-restaurant universe. Ryan Reynolds is “all about learning the routine,” he assures a new recruit. That routine includes how to deal with hateful customers, how to “push” the foods that are about to spoil in the freezer, how to maintain a relationship with the cooks. R; 100 minutes (Roger Moore, The Orlando Sentinel)
