Flawed, but a triumph of stop-motion animation and production design

Rating: Null/10 (10 October 2002)

Jack Skellington, Halloween Town's most prominent citizen, discovers Christmas and attempts to take over Santa Claus's duties one Christmas Eve. The plot may be as thin as the film's protagonist, but that's really not the point. "The Nightmare Before Christmas" luxuriates in Tim Burton's brilliantly warped imagination without apology, and rightly so. From the first frame to the last, it's an absolute marvel of production design. But even more importantly, it's a fine tribute to the art of stop-motion animation, especially in this day and age of CGI. As fluffy as the story is, it's still quite engaging, with a fair amount of wicked humor (both visual and verbal) thrown in for good measure. The weak link here is Danny Elfman's song score, which is flat and not well-suited to the story. In short, it frequently stops the movie in its tracks.