Unless you hate animation, you'll love this film.

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2000)

The Nightmare Before Christmas is charming, disturbing, enlightening and distributed by Disney. Since the 1960s, rarely, if ever, would I have associated any of the first three descriptors with the company in question. It is a tribute to Tim Burton and Henry Selick that they could even attempt this feat, much less accomplish it.
The story itself explores the notion of humanity's greediness in that the main character, Jack Skellington, the scariest (and therefore, worshiped) creature in Halloween Town, falls upon Christmas Town after finding himself unsatisfied by being the scariest once again: it's lonely at the top. After finding out that another holiday as different and exciting as Christmas exists, he attempts to make it his own by talking the inhabitants of Halloween Town into taking over Christmas for the year. Jack wants what can never be his.
The stop motion animation is awe-inspiring even to this day, seven years later. It is clear that the movie was time consuming and a labor of love. In addition to the fact that it was visually stunning, the animation proved itself necessary as the plot unfolded for many different reasons.
Danny Elfman performs at his usual virtuosic level as a composer and adds to it as the singing voice of Jack Skellington. The music is "catchy," complex and moving. One can live vicariously in the Burton world upon listening to the soundtrack alone.
The first time I saw the film, my initial thought (as an aspiring young music theatre actor) was that this would be a great Broadway show; however, I realized that the interpretation from stop motion animation to live action would have to lose something.
Tim Burton fans have likely already seen this movie, however, many of us may have been put off by the fact that Michael Eisner footed the bill. If you're a Tim Burton fan and you haven't seen this movie, do yourself the service of seeing it. There are some familiar items in this movie (i.e. the black and white color scheme from Beetlejuice and Sleepy Hollow, and the black and white striped worm from Beetlejuice) that you'll enjoy seeing. You'll also just plain enjoy the movie.
If you're a human being and you haven't seen this movie, do yourself the favor: see this movie. If you're a human being and you have seen this movie, do yourself the favor: see it again.