Terrific animated fantasy film.

Rating: 7/10 (23 December 2006)

The Nightmare Before Christmas starts on Halloween night in Halloween town where Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon & Danny Elfman) & the various other inhabitants of Halloween town are celebrating another highly successful night, however the celebration is tinged with sadness for Jack as he has become bored with Halloween. While out walking in the woods Jack comes across a doorway which leads to Christmas town where the inhabitants are busy preparing for Christmas day in less than two months time. Jack is enthralled & captivated by what he sees & is determined to add his own ghoulish touch to the festive celebrations, Jack manages to convince his fellow Halloween town inhabitants to help him in his audacious plan including the kidnapping of Santa Claus & the making of lots of twisted Christmas presents that he intends to deliver himself on Christmas Eve...
Directed by Henry Selick The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of those magical children films that should be enjoyed by kids of all ages, well possibly... The script by Caroline Thompson was based on a story by fantasy filmmaker Tim Burton & at only 75 odd minutes in length the youngster's won't get bored. The Nightmare Before Christmas is hard to categorise, it's certainly a children's film but it has a twisted dark edge to it although not a sinister or nasty one, is it a film for Christmas or a film for Halloween? I'd say it's smack bang somewhere between the two, I'd also say it's a throughly entertaining, charming & delightful film that really should appeal to the kid in all of us. Most of the film revolve around it's cool songs which show plenty of imagination, are pretty catchy & they actually help drive the story forward. I did feel it was a little compromised at times as it tried to walk the line between family entertainment & it's dark twisted side & it's not that mainstream so unfortunately maybe not quite everyone will appreciate it. The character's are both imaginative & decent enough & there are some fab musical numbers in it.
Director Selnick does a good job but maybe it's the actual animator's which deserve more of the credit. The first thing to say is that The Nightmare Before Christmas is an almost completely stop-motion animated film where model puppets are shot one frame at a time together with some CGI & each character is brilliantly brought to life, from the main star Jack to even the lesser character's like the Vampires everyone is brought to life with exquisite attention to detail, tremendous care & great personality. The sets are also fantastic, from the spooky Halloween town to the bright Christmas town The Nightmare Before Christmas looks beautiful throughout & is a technical marvel. Brilliant stuff all the way & there are some truly fantastic scenes & set-pieces in here.
With a supposed budget of about $18,000,000 I must admit that sounded a lot of money to me although I don't really have much of an idea of how much something like this would have cost, technically it's faultless & it's as simple & straight forward as that. It was nominated for an Oscar for best visual effects but lost out to Jurassic Park (1993) which is fair enough I suppose... The songs are well delivered & are very well written. The voice acting is good & each character really does have their own personality, you'll love each & every one of them.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is a top quality film & as far as I'm concerned there's no doubt about that but I'm not sure it has great replay potential & it's with a slightly heavy heart that I also think it's not a film for everyone, definitely recommended all the same though. Re-released in 2006 in a computerised 3D version into digital 3D theatres, whatever they are...