The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
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The Nightmare Before Christmas Movie Review
The Nightmare Before Christmas is a 1993 stop-motion animated musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick. It is one of the most overrated animated movies.
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“Just because I cannot see it doesn’t mean I can’t believe it!“
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Jack Skellington, a being from Halloween Town, finds Christmas Town and is instantly enchanted. The situation becomes riveting when his obsession with Christmas leads him to abduct Santa Claus. I find this movie to only be solid. I may be in the huge minority, but the film to me felt overly slim and nowhere near as iconic as so many would say it is.
My main issue is the characterization here. I did not care for any of these characters because they were so slightly written and ultimately felt like an afterthought. The anti-hero at the core of the story, Jack Skellington, is solid. His arc is meaningful and well executed. But everybody else was quite mediocre, including Sally who’s just another dull love interest.
The mad scientist was pleasingly goofy and fun, but Oogie Boogie and Santa Claus were both not all that interesting nor did they get to do much besides the regular good guy-bad guy shtick. The whole conflict felt very simplistic and bland.
This just might be a personal taste, but I do not care for holidays, so that leads to my general disinterest in holiday movies. This one attempts to do two. It tries to be a Christmas holiday film and a Halloween picture, and I found the mixing of the two not all that well done. Had they focused on just one of these, it would have turned out much better. This way, it felt undercooked in both.
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The movie was actually directed by Henry Selick, not Tim Burton. Burton wrote the screenplay, but he did not direct the feature, which is a common mistake most people make. It’s also not a Disney movie by any means, another common mistake. Whether you think of this flick as a Selick or a Burton feature due to how much importance you weigh on either directing or writing, it doesn’t matter. The point is that this is not among either of their best works. ‘Coraline’ is infinitely better from Selick while Burton’s ‘Edward Scissorhands’ did a similarly toned story much more effectively.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is also a musical and I did not care about the music either. I wish I liked it more, but none of these musical numbers appealed to me as they could never compare to Disney’s solid efforts, let alone their classics. This Is Halloween is the most overrated musical number in all of animation. It just consists of title words repeated ad nauseam. The beat is slightly annoying and the song is very repetitive. All of these songs represent a holiday spirit effortlessly, but they just aren’t fun to either sing along or listen to.
Jack’s Lament is utterly forgettable. What’s This fares a bit better than most due to its fun, upbeat score, but again the words are repeated way too much. The lyrics really should have been more sophisticated in this entire soundtrack. Kidnap the Sandy Claws is memorable and somewhat appealing, but again one-note. Oogie Boogie’s Song is definitely accompanied by wonderfully trippy imagery, but the song itself is weak. I really liked Finale and that closing sequence was so beautiful and classical in its imagery.
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What really elevates this movie for me is the animation. Wow, is this stop-motion animation amazing or what? The character designs are top-notch and authentic, the colors are wonderful and the action on screen is constant with so many details popping in and becoming alive from all sides of the screen. A lot of effort was obviously put into this production and it shows as the style is gorgeous and pleasingly simplistic. This movie elevated this animation medium to the next level.
