"Corpse Bride" and the new trailer
I was lucky enough to get to see a sneak preview of "Corpse Bride" with friends last night, including The Lovely Roommate and the Fabulous Nancy (along with Patt and Kim, whose nicknames I'm still working on).
I'm bummed out because...well, I didn't like it much. Let me rephrase. I didn't actively dislike it. I didn't think it was bad. It just inspired virtually zero emotional reaction from me. All my friends loved it, and so far on the Tomatometer (with 11 reviews in so far) it's scoring 91%, so clearly I'm a freak. I've been pondering why it didn't do it for me. I expected to love it as much as I loved Nightmare Before Christmas and I was disappointed. Am I too cynical? Too picky? Are my standards impossibly high? Or am I just soulless and empty???
I guess I just expected more. The humor was not clever or inspired, mostly consisting of an endless series of groanworthy puns, both verbal and visual, on death and being dead. In such a creative medium and in the hands of such a creative man, I expected better than pratfalls and vaudeville humor. The funny-dancing-singing-skeletons shtick felt tired and hokey. The songs were surprisingly derivative and forgettable. One of them was so reminiscent of "Friend Like Me" from "Aladdin" that both Rachel and I ended up with that song in our heads independently of each other. It did NOT help that the theater had the sound cranked up so loud that the speakers were distorting and rendering much of the dialogue and singing unintelligible, although that's not the movie's fault, of course.
The story was predictable in a fairy-tale way, which would have been okay if the execution had been clever enough to compensate for it, but for me, it wasn't.
I guess it's just purely an emotional thing. While I watched it, I just sat there. I didn't smile, I didn't laugh, I didn't gasp. The movie just happened to me. I wasn't on board, which is sad for me, because I was there all ready with my ticket and my hatbox ready to get on board. Oh well.
I can't see the new trailer until I get home tonight (sob) but screencaps, yay!
I'm bummed out because...well, I didn't like it much. Let me rephrase. I didn't actively dislike it. I didn't think it was bad. It just inspired virtually zero emotional reaction from me. All my friends loved it, and so far on the Tomatometer (with 11 reviews in so far) it's scoring 91%, so clearly I'm a freak. I've been pondering why it didn't do it for me. I expected to love it as much as I loved Nightmare Before Christmas and I was disappointed. Am I too cynical? Too picky? Are my standards impossibly high? Or am I just soulless and empty???
I guess I just expected more. The humor was not clever or inspired, mostly consisting of an endless series of groanworthy puns, both verbal and visual, on death and being dead. In such a creative medium and in the hands of such a creative man, I expected better than pratfalls and vaudeville humor. The funny-dancing-singing-skeletons shtick felt tired and hokey. The songs were surprisingly derivative and forgettable. One of them was so reminiscent of "Friend Like Me" from "Aladdin" that both Rachel and I ended up with that song in our heads independently of each other. It did NOT help that the theater had the sound cranked up so loud that the speakers were distorting and rendering much of the dialogue and singing unintelligible, although that's not the movie's fault, of course.
The story was predictable in a fairy-tale way, which would have been okay if the execution had been clever enough to compensate for it, but for me, it wasn't.
I guess it's just purely an emotional thing. While I watched it, I just sat there. I didn't smile, I didn't laugh, I didn't gasp. The movie just happened to me. I wasn't on board, which is sad for me, because I was there all ready with my ticket and my hatbox ready to get on board. Oh well.
I can't see the new trailer until I get home tonight (sob) but screencaps, yay!