Released: November 13th,
1993
Rated: PG
Distributor: Buena Vista
International
Starring: Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara,
William Hickey
Directed by: Henry Selick
Written by: Tim Burton, Michael McDowell, Caroline Thompson
Personal Bias Alert: doesn’t like stop-motion animation, lukewarm on Tim Burton
4 of 10
The Nightmare Before Christmas should be
one of my classics. I was the perfect
age when it came out, was drawn to dark kids fare, and was already steeped in
Burton’s style. But Nightmare slipped through the cracks to become one of those films I
always knew of but never saw. Now over
twenty years later, the film seems to have lost its magic. Perhaps replication has made it seem less
original, perhaps I’m just too old, or perhaps (just perhaps) it has always
been too lightweight to hold up its own reputation.
In
a world where each holiday has its own isolated town, Halloween’s frightful
leader Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon and Danny Elfman) finds himself tired
of celebrating the same holiday every year.
While wandering the woods in misery, he comes across Christmas Town and
is enchanted by its bright cheer. Jack
brings tidings of Christmas back to Halloween Town and endeavors to lead his
newfound holiday the following year, but when his fear-loving townsfolk
struggle to grasp the concept, Jack must somehow morph ghoulish ghosts into
spry elves.
It’s
a silly plot, but to be fair, it is intended for very young children. In this case, silly is fine, but lightweight
is not. So little happens in Nightmare that its brief runtime feels
stretched tight. It plays out with the intentional
clunkiness of a TV special and lacks drive or stakes. It falls prey to the idea that little kids
can’t handle narrative menace, and it’s a much lesser and slightly patronizing
film for it. Consider Disney’s landmark Beauty and the Beast, released just two
years before Nightmare. This film presents kids with the prospect of
being separated from your parents, bullied by a monster, and loosing forever the
people that you love. Nightmare has a potentially messed up
Christmas and a bored protagonist. See
the difference? How are children, let
alone the adults being drug along with them, supposed to get invested in this
story?
As
is often the answer with Tim Burton products, it’s the off-kilter, gothic style
that’s supposed to reel you in. The
beauty of the film can’t be denied, even when you’re looking at worm-ridden
monsters. Burton and company designed a
few truly memorable creatures here, from the lanky Jack to his pincushion admirer,
which are all just the right amount of creepy.
Surrounding them are elaborate, misshapen buildings that you can imagine
creaking and swaying in the wind.
Halloween Town is so perfectly themed that it’s a shock when things briefly
switch to Christmas Town, with its popping colors and twinkling light. It shows that the production team was capable
of so much variety, which makes Halloween Town’s rigidly Tim Burton style a bit
disappointing. The entire look is
replicated in past and future projects, the awe of which is diminished by so
much repetition. It’s still beautiful,
don’t get me wrong, it’s just not enough to support an entire film.
Filling
out the scant plot is a bunch of supposedly peppy musical numbers composed by
longtime Burton collaborator Danny Elfman.
While the songs have their moments, they’re filled with repetitive and
semi-lazy lyrics. Sentiments are reworded ad nauseam, and it’s
not uncommon to hear nonsense phrases just because they rhyme. The accompanying music is often pretty
bare-bones, so if you’re not into the zany words, then the numbers will do
little to brew your excitement. Couple
that with a ridiculously undercooked romance, and the film offers little else
besides surface entertainment.
Burton
had Nightmare cooking in his brain
for nearly ten years before the film went into production. It seems to have been a passion project for
the man, and perhaps because of that there’s little effort to make it appeal to
a wider audience. You’ll either be
charmed by his style or you won’t, because there’s little other reason to watch
this film.
Other Notes:
Ø I’ve
long been slightly creeped out by stop-motion animation. Everything appears lifeless to me, and I have
great difficulty connecting to any story told with this method.
Ø Note
that this film is Tim Burton’s baby, but he did not direct it. He was too busy at the time with Batman Returns and Ed Wood.
Ø The
scientific method joke made me laugh out loud.
Poor Jack, it never sways public opinion.
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