Undying Love: Corpse Bride

“Why would you go up there when people are dying to come down here?” This is said by the wise man of the underworld named Elder Gutknecht. He says this when someone is trying to get him to help them go to the land of the living, or our world. This movie has good characters from both worlds, as well as the music. Since it is a musical and those tend to have music in them.

As the story progresses, many characters come into it. But the main character is named Victor, played by actor Johnny Depp. He is a character that is living, who loves to play the piano. Next we have the woman who Victor is supposed to marry. Her name is Victoria. She’s a little bit shy in the beginning but opens up more as the two get closer. Then there is the lovely Corpse Bride who has been dead for some time now. Out of all of these characters, and the others from the musical, the most clueless one of both worlds seems to be Victoria.

The strangeness of these worlds is that the underworld- even though it is filled with the dead- is actually more alive, in a figurative sense of course. The people seem to be happier and more lively down there than the ones that are living. The living tend to be “stuck” doing the same boring thing over and over again everyday. Like one couple that was just chopping fish for their fish shop. They were doing fine, but they were doing it the exact same way every time-like robots that are programmed to do the same thing over and over again. The dead, however, are always jubilantly laughing and singing.

This music is always happy and lively, with a good tempo and a good beat; the music from the living, however, is not. In fact there is usually no music that seems to be happy, not even the soundtrack that goes with that world is anything other than depressing. One song that sounded like it was supposed to be happy, because of the chords in the song, made it sound depressing. Out of both the worlds, I like the music from the characters that are dead

The characters as well as the music make the movie good. While the contrast between the worlds gives it a break from being the same thing through the entire movie. The living, sad and depressing. The dead, lively and jubilant. In the end love always wins. Although this movie may have gotten a few rotten reviews for having some language in it. As one dead man said, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”