A nightmare before Christmas...

Rating: 4/10 (2 November 2005)

This is not really very good at all. I don't understand all these rave reviews. What went wrong? A Nightmare before Christmas is funny; has great music - also by Danny Elfman I believe; the story is delightfully subversive and the animation brilliant.
Let's begin with the good news. The animation in Corpse Bride remains excellent. Particularly the use of highly chromatic grading in the "dead world" contrasting deathly grading in the living world.
In every other respect it is ponderous (in the extreme) in fact I fell asleep. Maybe I was just tired. Maybe it was just plain dull. Maybe both.
But the truth is the story is no more than a tissue (it might have made a nice short) and the gags mostly lame and you could see them coming a mile off.
Danny Elfman surely trotted this one off in his lunch hour. Possibly his worst soundtrack ever and in any case there wasn't that much for him to do.
It's funny because the new Wallace and Gromit's a bit overrated too (but a lot more entertaining and far better scripted than this.) A project I feel. Not a passion. Sorry; I so wanted to like it too. So did my kids and they thought it was boring too.