The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Would you watch a film that had a Christmas AND Halloween theme? In October 1993, one was made and if you haven’t seen it by now… you should fix that… quickly! After you finish reading my review, please and thank you.

Directing this 76 minute animation/family/fantasy/musical is Henry Selick.

Making Christmas in this flick is: Chris Sarandon as Jack Skellington, Danny Elfman as Singing voice of Jack Skellington, Catherine O’Hara as Sally, William Hickey as Dr. Finklestein, Glenn Shadix as Mayor, Paul Reubens as Lock and Ken Page as Oogie Boogie.

Jack is the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town. A place where all the scary things live and spend the year trying to make the next Halloween better than the last. Something Jack takes great pride in and puts all of his focus into. Yet, doing the same thing over and over can get old. On a stroll through the woods, Jack stumbles upon a bunch of strange doors.Curious, Jack goes through the door to Christmas Town. After talking a stroll around Christmas Town seeing the lights and trees with gifts underneath. Jack realizes he has found a new passion. He wants Halloween town to pull off Christmas this year. Unfortunately, trying to get the residents of Halloween Town to understand Christmas is proving rather difficult. After taking Santa’s place, Jack has some scariffic gifts that he thinks all the little boys and girls will love.

What’s cool about this movie? Lets start off: with it’s a stop motion film that looks really cool. Which means the creators are working with (in this case) clay models that are moved in really small increments and photographed step by step. Then the pictures are combined until you have a character walking or dancing around. Which, in this case, the process took about three years to make.

Next cool factor is the songs that are done by Danny Elfman (lead singer of Oingo Boingo), that are freaking amazing to listen to and flow beautifully through the film. We also get a chance to hear Elfman do some vocal work as the singing voice of Jack Skellington.

The story and characters came from a poem written by Tim Burton back in 1982. His idea became a movie that has not only a fun but imaginative storyline, with an awesome playthrough. I realize all this may have been little too educational, and less of a review. So I’ll try to wrap this up (x-mas pun!). It’s a great family movie, but might be kinda scary for little little kids. For instance, one character walks around with an axe in his head. If I remember right, we let our youngest watch this for the first time when she was 9. Since then it’s been game on, and after the movie you can hear all the songs being re-sung throughout the house. Yeah, they do stick with ya. The cast is filled with great actors, that do an awesome job bring the characters to life.

 

Summary : It's on the Christmas must watch list in my house, along with the other Christmas movies.

It's rated PG.


Rating


Average

5