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The Nightmare Before Christmas
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
"Well, at least they're excited, but they don't understand
that special kind of feeling in Christmas Land... oh well..."
Final Verdict: [Friggen' Awesome]
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Stop-Motion Musical / English / 1993
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
It's been a while since I've given anything a 5/5 and there's a certain line stuck in my head right now...
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
"Well, at least they're excited, but they don't understand
that special kind of feeling in Christmas Land... oh well..."
It may come as a surprise for me to say that I don't actually celebrate any holidays. I don't even LIKE Halloween and Christmas.
But if there were one thing I dug about either holiday it's their festive and thematic qualities and Nightmare Before Christmas indulges purely in that.
NBC may be the most difficult thing for me to review fairly because I've watched it so many times and it's so entrenched in my nostalgia that it's a challenge to take off the rose-colored glasses and lay into it like any other movie.
Watching it again I can pick out a few things, but nothing that comes across to me as much more than nitpicking. There're occasional bouts of awkward animation, one or two continuity errors, and I'd be amiss if I didn't admit that the movie certainly doesn't come across with any sort of agenda beyond being unabashedly silly, even with it's lyrics.
One lull in the movie I've always felt is Sally's Song and just the general attempt to mold some skeleton of a romance into the plot. I really don't mind Sally, I find her interesting, but her solo song has always been the least interesting bit of the movie to me. It doesn't put me off as much as it used to, but I can still comfortably say it's my least favorite part of the movie.
There's also something to be said of the occasionally morbid character visuals that present the denizens of Halloween Town as intentionally unattractive. Fortunately, it's all meant in good spirit and it hardly detracts from my favorite thing about the movie that it's visuals.
I've since seen higher quality stop-motion animations, and even ignoring what must have been a tremendous amount of work to shoot (simulating camera movement in stop-motion must be a royal bitch) for sake of bias, I cannot help but praise the overall design of the world(s) which appeals to me on a truly fundamental level.
The use of small isolated sets that give the impression of a stage play in combination with the surreal yet internally logical design of the environments really present this movie as more of an imagination grounded in a very specific range of emotions. It's not just the visual themes it's trying to evoke it's the emotional ones as well.
It's that touch of German Expressionism I brought up in Metropolis where the focus isn't in engaging you through realism (that's arguably an uphill battle anyway), but in engaging you through emotive design.
In that sense I think it's an absolute success and everything in the small details, from the clever lighting to the patchwork of themes, be they Rudolph or Dracula, feed directly into that.
A musical certainly isn't anything without it's music though and Danny Elfman really hits it out of the park because I'll be damned if I don't remember every single line of every single song.
I must emphasize though that it's not merely the composition of the songs or the lyrics that progress the story that appeal to me. A big chunk of credit MUST also go Danny Elfman's charismatic delivery as well as to Chris Sarandon (both of which double as hero, Jack Skellington's, voice) and to Ken Page who plays the villain, Oogie Boogie. Their varied emphasis and enunciations are just too much fun NOT to mimic.
Reeling it in, the story is about simple as any child's wonderment story could be. The king of Halloween is bored and wants to try something new and that's when he discovers Christmas. Shenanigans ensue!
It's not merely a comedy though, it's more of an adventure story with ideas of self-exploration and not overstepping your bounds, and in the pursuit of that story it does quite a few interesting things in it's attempt to crossover these two universes. Perhaps it's why one of my favorite pieces is Jack's Obsession:
It's not the most visually interesting piece and the song itself doesn't really stand out among it's peers, but the concepts that it juggles what with Jack, an avatar of Halloween and fear trying to rationalize what it is that appeals to him about Christmas and cheer just clicks with me, perhaps because this idea of trying to make sense of things and questioning yourself sounds familiar.
I struggle to explain what it is I exactly like about THIS MOVIE.
Sometimes I make mistakes, sometimes I make BIG mistakes and despite good advice I have to learn the hard way where it is I ****ed up, should have stepped back, and reconsidered.
Ultimately all I really have to do is say, "Look, the movie may be flawed and you're free to point out those flaws to me and explain why Coraline or ParaNorman or whatever is an objectively better movie, but you know what? I don't care. I love this movie. And you'll be hard-pressed to do one better in my book."
It's also one of my favorite worlds in Kingdom Hearts so there's that too.
But if there were one thing I dug about either holiday it's their festive and thematic qualities and Nightmare Before Christmas indulges purely in that.
NBC may be the most difficult thing for me to review fairly because I've watched it so many times and it's so entrenched in my nostalgia that it's a challenge to take off the rose-colored glasses and lay into it like any other movie.
Watching it again I can pick out a few things, but nothing that comes across to me as much more than nitpicking. There're occasional bouts of awkward animation, one or two continuity errors, and I'd be amiss if I didn't admit that the movie certainly doesn't come across with any sort of agenda beyond being unabashedly silly, even with it's lyrics.
One lull in the movie I've always felt is Sally's Song and just the general attempt to mold some skeleton of a romance into the plot. I really don't mind Sally, I find her interesting, but her solo song has always been the least interesting bit of the movie to me. It doesn't put me off as much as it used to, but I can still comfortably say it's my least favorite part of the movie.
There's also something to be said of the occasionally morbid character visuals that present the denizens of Halloween Town as intentionally unattractive. Fortunately, it's all meant in good spirit and it hardly detracts from my favorite thing about the movie that it's visuals.
I've since seen higher quality stop-motion animations, and even ignoring what must have been a tremendous amount of work to shoot (simulating camera movement in stop-motion must be a royal bitch) for sake of bias, I cannot help but praise the overall design of the world(s) which appeals to me on a truly fundamental level.
It's that touch of German Expressionism I brought up in Metropolis where the focus isn't in engaging you through realism (that's arguably an uphill battle anyway), but in engaging you through emotive design.
In that sense I think it's an absolute success and everything in the small details, from the clever lighting to the patchwork of themes, be they Rudolph or Dracula, feed directly into that.
A musical certainly isn't anything without it's music though and Danny Elfman really hits it out of the park because I'll be damned if I don't remember every single line of every single song.
I must emphasize though that it's not merely the composition of the songs or the lyrics that progress the story that appeal to me. A big chunk of credit MUST also go Danny Elfman's charismatic delivery as well as to Chris Sarandon (both of which double as hero, Jack Skellington's, voice) and to Ken Page who plays the villain, Oogie Boogie. Their varied emphasis and enunciations are just too much fun NOT to mimic.
Reeling it in, the story is about simple as any child's wonderment story could be. The king of Halloween is bored and wants to try something new and that's when he discovers Christmas. Shenanigans ensue!
It's not merely a comedy though, it's more of an adventure story with ideas of self-exploration and not overstepping your bounds, and in the pursuit of that story it does quite a few interesting things in it's attempt to crossover these two universes. Perhaps it's why one of my favorite pieces is Jack's Obsession:
It's not the most visually interesting piece and the song itself doesn't really stand out among it's peers, but the concepts that it juggles what with Jack, an avatar of Halloween and fear trying to rationalize what it is that appeals to him about Christmas and cheer just clicks with me, perhaps because this idea of trying to make sense of things and questioning yourself sounds familiar.
I struggle to explain what it is I exactly like about THIS MOVIE.
Sometimes I make mistakes, sometimes I make BIG mistakes and despite good advice I have to learn the hard way where it is I ****ed up, should have stepped back, and reconsidered.
Ultimately all I really have to do is say, "Look, the movie may be flawed and you're free to point out those flaws to me and explain why Coraline or ParaNorman or whatever is an objectively better movie, but you know what? I don't care. I love this movie. And you'll be hard-pressed to do one better in my book."
It's also one of my favorite worlds in Kingdom Hearts so there's that too.
Final Verdict: [Friggen' Awesome]