BY DESTINY BRADEN (’17)

ONCE UPON A TIME, I watched a trailer that promised a movie full of twisted fairytales and great characters . . . and Johnny Depp.

I took my family and we rode to the movies in our noble Mazda. The ads finally end and the long-awaited movie begins. I was surprised to find that the movie opened with the song “Into the Woods,” which was then followed by many others.  Since there weren’t any songs in the trailer, I was slightly confused, but the music was good so I was happy.

“Into the Woods” begins with a baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) who is unable to have a child. A cursed witch (Meryl Streep) makes an offer to enable the couple to bear a child in return for the couple to procure the items needed to break her curse. These items include a milk-white cow, a golden slipper, a blood-red cape, and hair as yellow as corn.

Along the way, the couple meets Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack from Jack and the Bean Stock, and Cinderella. Each character has a wish, ranging from getting to grandma’s house to going to the royal ball. As the movie clearly states, be careful what you wish for.

Fairytales are ground so deep into our beings that they make up a large part of who we are. They were introduced to us in colorful cardboard books with thick pages by our parents to soothe us to sleep. From then on, every little girl is a princess and every dress a gown. Every mound is a castle and every frog is a prince. In fairytales, the good always wins while evil always loses. The prince always saves the damsel, and everything ends happily ever after.

“Into the Woods” takes this fantastical view of fairytales and promptly snaps it in half.

The beginning through middle of the movie was great, especially the song “Agony” sang by the two princes in a waterfall (yes, in a waterfall). I was slightly saddened by the fact Johnny Depp, whom I thought would be playing a main role in the film, was actually only in the movie for about five minutes.

The movie gets to the point where everything could happily end, the princes were getting married with their princesses, the witch’s curse was lifted, and the baker and his wife finally had their long-awaited child. This is where I think the movie should’ve ended.

Instead, the movie was merely halfway done. It takes the coveted happy endings that the characters worked so hard for and shatters them into tiny little pieces. The happily wed baker’s wife with a new child kisses the apparently not-so-charming prince and then falls off a cliff.

The heartbroken princess then decides she rather likes cinders and goes to help raise the also heartbroken baker’s child.

Overall, the movie was great with good music (even though it was unexpected), despite the fact it drags on much longer than necessary. And the movie ended with a not-so-happy ever after.

THE END