Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is a beautiful and melancholic animation which portrays a romantic fairytale story with a very dark twist. Johnny Depp voices Victor, a young bachelor whose rich parents have arranged for him to marry Victoria (Emily Watson), the daughter of a poor, aristocratic couple. Stunned by Victoria's beauty and too shy to speak the marriage vows, Victor escapes to a graveyard where he accidentally puts the wedding ring on the bony finger of Emily, a corpse bride (Helena Bonham Carter). Victor is dragged to the corpse bride's world of the dead while Victoria is forced by her parents to marry Barkis - a sinister man who claims to be a distant relative. Marrying a rotting corpse - albeit a beautiful one - is a morbid idea. The excellent animation lends a fairytale quality to the dark tale. Co-directors Tim Burton and Mike Johnson juxtapose cute with creepy, love with death, and beauty with maggots to create an entertaining animation that is both hauntingly beautiful and deadly funny. The underground world is portrayed as a colourful place with fun-loving and humorous ghosts, while the parents of Victor and Victoria live in a grim and heartless society and care only about notoriety and money. There are plenty of beautiful moments, which are topped off with Burton's trademark happy ending. Burton, who admits to being obsessed with the supernatural, created the 1993 animation The Nightmare Before Christmas, a ghoul-filled holiday delight. Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is marketed as a Halloween movie, but given its inspiring messages about love and sacrifice, it's equally suitable for Valentine's Day - albeit a spooky one. VERDICT: WE LOVE IT! We have 10 sets of magnets from the movie to give away. To win, e-mail syp@scmp.com with the answer to the following question: Who are the co-directors of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride?
