Movie Review -'Corpse Bride Has a Nightmare'

Twelve years ago, Tim Burton and Henry Selick made a stop-motion animation movie about a Halloween world and it’s Pumpkin King who longed for something more so he takes over Christmas.

This was “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Now it has a major following and Burton has made another stop motion animation film this time about a ghoulish bride and her accidental marriage to a still living man with a fiancé.

Victor Van Dort (voiced By Johnny Depp) is arranged to marry a girl he had only met once, but loved from the first moment, Victoria Everglot (voiced by Emily Watson). In nervousness, he fumbles with his vows and the priest makes him practice until he gets them right before the rehearsal continues. Victor goes to practice in the woods and he finally gets them right he. Is so theatrical about it that he even goes so far as to place the ring on an old tree root. This is actually the rotting hand of the Corpse Bride (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter). She bursts out of the ground and takes Victor to the land of the dead to spend eternity with her new husband.

Based on a Russian folktale about the unholy nuptials between a dead bride and a living man on the eve of his earthly wedding, Burton has been working on this project for ten years and it has paid off. Hoards of “Nightmare” fans will flock to see this movie expecting a film like “Nightmare” but be warned though it is stop motion animation about skeletons and the dead this movie is very much different from “Nightmare.” Many shots look similar and the musical numbers try to look the same in homage to “Nightmare” but they are very different movies though both very enjoyable.

The songs in “Nightmare” are much better than those in “Bride.” The visuals are so overwhelming with so much happening at once in “Bride” that one would have to see it several times to see everything. This has a good story of unrequited love that many people will relate to but as good as it is there is something so sad about the film.

When you walk out of the theater you are so sad and you don’t really feel that the story is complete. There doesn’t need to be a happy ever after ending but there should be a more completed one. In “Nightmare,” the story was sad because you pity Jack the Pumpkin King.

He is tired and bored of Halloween and longs for something different. In process he destroys that he loves the most but finds a new flare for Halloween and is excited about it again. He rights his wrongs, rescues Sandy Claws from Oogie Boogie, and everything is OK again.

This lets you walk out of the theater with a smile on your face rather than being so sad.

The movie is for those who like a good story and don’t mind being a little sad.

Charly Shelton is a junior at Crescenta Valley High School.