The legions of fans who liked director Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas will surely like the delightful Corpse Bride, the closest we’re likely to get to a sequel. Once again, Burton deals with death and the macabre in a disarming (pardon the pun) way. The overall tone is so good-natured and sweet that the audience can laugh when a character’s leg falls off or her eye falls into the soup. Even the skeletal dog seems cuddly.

The story begins with a wedding rehearsal for an arranged marriage between Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp) and Victoria Everglott (Emily Watson). (Those first names might be a nod to Blake Edwards, but there are so many in-jokes that you’ll have to see the film two or three times to get them all.) The rehearsal does not go well, and Victor flees to the forest to rehearse his vows. There he is overheard by Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), a deceased bride who is waiting for a husband. Emily claims Victor and whisks him off to the underworld to meet his new, deceased relatives, leaving the audience to guess how Victor and Victoria will be reunited.

Rather than use CGI for this film, Burton has opted for the same stop-motion animation of puppets that made Nightmare so successful. (A great in-joke: When Victor sits down to play the piano, it is identified as a "Harryhausen," named for the great master of stop-motion animation.) The characters are all eyes, three-dimensional in every way, and deliciously quirky. One of Emily’s eyes, for instance, keeps popping out to expose a jolly little maggot that serves as her conscience. That might sound grisly in the telling, but in Burton’s vision it is actually endearing.

The color scheme is dark -- darker for the world of the living than for the underworld, which seems Burton’s comment on what it isn’t to be alive. Danny Elfman’s songs are chipper even when the lyrics are demonic, and the very imaginative surround sound helps to draw the audience into the events onscreen.

Corpse Bride is rated PG "for some scary images," but I can’t imagine any but the very youngest children being frightened by this film. They are more likely to be amused by its colorful characters and moved by its sweet story of love conquering all.

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