Tim Burton always has a thing for the outcast. The weirdo. The misunderstood. Animation would seem perfect for the man, freeing him from the constraints of, you know, reality. The Nightmare Before Christmas is a perfect example of that, with Burton somehow fusing Halloween, Christmas, musicals, and stop motion animation into one strange brew sure to appeal to the weirdo in all of us in some way.
With another successful Halloween in the books, you’d think the Pumpkin King of Haloweentown Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon/Danny Elfman, depending on if Jack’s talking/singing) would be thrilled at how many innovative scares he pulled off. Instead, Jack has hit a rut, and wants to try something new. Aimlessly walking through the forest, he finds a portal to other holiday towns, specifically Christmastown. Jack becomes so enamored with Christmas town that he decides he will fly the sleigh on Christmas, using his Halloweentown friends to help him.
When they talk about the most beautiful animated films ever made, The Nightmare Before Christmas has to be in the discussion. Burton and director Henry Selick’s imaginations run wild here with the character and creature design, giving us a smorgasbord of strange. The designs all find that Burton sweet spot of 20% scary, 80% intriguing. Skellington alone is a marvel: a black and white stick figure who appears to be 30 feet tall and have a shocking range of emotions on his pumpkin face. The sets surrounding the characters range from fascinating to downright majestic, like when Jack walks up a hill right in front of a gorgeous full moon. It’s maybe best to describe The Nightmare Before Christmas as the distraction movie, because most of the time I was more interested in exploring Halloweentown than going where Burton wants this story to go.
That’s mostly because The Nightmare Before Christmas can’t quite escape its intriguing premise into a fully realized tale. My mind was giddy with excitement the minute those holiday portals showed up. And some of the choices work great: how can you possibly explain Christmas to someone who lives in a world of scares and pranks? The movie needs 5 more minutes of Jack hitting this catharsis, instead of just instantaneously being ok with it. This leaves the third act to distract us with a really fun and slightly macabre fight, but that battle is so outside what the movie was doing it doesn’t really work. More importantly, the resolution Burton comes up with has lots of pretty sinister (in this case, in a bad way) thematic elements if you start to dig down that are lessons kids probably shouldn’t learn. Thankfully, we’ve got Jack Skellington stick fighting his way through saving a holiday season.
What’s this? What’s this? There’s certainly magic in the air as Danny Elfman sings. If you’re a 12 year old, and you see The Night Before Christmas, it’s going to blow your mind that movies can do stuff like that. And for the outcast, the weirdo, the misunderstood, the movie can be a salve and call into the void that you’re not alone, and you should embrace your inner weird, because it makes you special. Then you can get really messed up and into David Lynch films when you get to college.