Memorably Quirky But Lacking In Substance

Rating: 3/10 (4 January 2012)

Tim Burton has a history of putting out as either producer or director (he's the producer here) of rather quirky movies, and this may well be his quirkiest. Quirky it definitely is, and unique and original as well. But one can't give a lot of points just for being originally quirky. Somewhere along the way a movie has to entertain; it has to have a strong plot. "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (as intriguing as it is) doesn't do that. There's enough here in terms of story to make maybe a 10-15 minute short film. Stretching it out for over an hour and a quarter is too much. I found the whole thing got tiresome rather quickly.
The story revolves around the character of Jack Skellington - a skeleton inhabiting an animated nightmare of a place called Halloween Town. Halloween Town - as the name implies - is totally fixated on Halloween. October 31 is its one and only reason for existing, and it's appropriately populated by a collection of ghosts, goblins and various and assorted other monsters, including Jack - a skeleton who is the pumpkin king. But Jack one night accidentally falls through a door in a tree and discovers Christmas Town - a place as fixated on Christmas as Halloween Town is on Halloween. Fixated by the idea Jack returns home with tales of the place and then chooses to return to kidnap Santa Claus, and then takes his place on Christmas Eve, delivering ghoulish Christmas presents to boys and girls around the world. But when he discovers that his presents haven't brought the joy that the real Santa's presents bring, he resolves to fix things by returning the real Santa to his rightful place, while he returns to his place as pumpkin king.
I realize there's an important message here about being yourself, and not pretending to be something that you're not. And watching this and its assortment of memorable characters is certainly an experience. I just didn't think that it made for a very good feature film. (3/10)