Corpse Bride Review

Corpse Bride is a 2005 children’s, drama film directed by Mike Johnson and Tim Burton. The movie is about a young man named Victor (played by Johnny Depp) who finds himself married to a dead bride named Emily (played by Helena Bonham Carter) after he was practicing his wedding vows in a forest. Now he must find a way to escape his corpse bride and get above-ground before his love, a nice girl named Victoria (played by Emily Watson) marries Barkis Bittern (played by Richard E. Grant.).

The best way to describe this movie is ‘cute.’ It’s a neat little film with creative and cute ideas, some funny lines, decent characters and simple plot. It’s easy to see why this movie resonated with so many people, and why its watched every year around halloween. However, at times the movie can get boring, and long. The characters, while decent, are a bit dull, and uninteresting. The plot faces much the same problem, and it has a very obvious twist towards the end. If the film doesn’t interest you by the time Emily shows up, it probably isn’t going to interest you at all. 

Corpse Bride does make a unique little aesthetic decision, making the above-ground characters and backgrounds grey and faded, while making the below-ground bright blue, with sharp shadows. It’s an obvious little trick that makes the world of the living look boring, while making the world of the dead, ironically, lively, but it works really well in the movie. I can’t help but appreciate that. 

Overall, it’s a cute little movie. If you haven’t at least watched through it once, give it a try! It’s definitely worth watching at least once to see if this kind of movie hits your buttons.