Corpse Bride

Wow. When The Nightmare Before Christmas is the "normal" cousin, that's one weird family. Both that work of genius and this film bear a familial resemblance, though the younger relative is not quite the achiever that the elder cousin is. This one has a lot of the same visual inventiveness, the same mix of jokes and drama, and is mostly entertaining throughout. The only real problems here are a certain unevenness in the musical numbers; with this outing soundtrack master Danny Elfman tries to broaden the range of song styles, which only creates a certain choppiness rather than a smooth, unified score. Mostly, that's a quibble; there's more than enough good stuff here to make this flick a fun time.