This is part of a series of No Shame Movie Reviews. For reasons I won’t speculate and rant about now, we have been told that only some movies are worth enjoying. Only artsy movies with a meaningful and/or ambiguous message, perhaps. To that, I say phooey. I say that you should be able to watch and enjoy any movie you want – from low-budget children’s movies to dramas about the hopelessly romantic. If you enjoy them, then why the heck should you not be able to watch them without shame?
So, Halloween is coming up (I know, this is groundbreaking journalism), and obviously that means I’m going to be reviewing another Halloween-y movie! One small problem, though… I don’t watch scary movies. I haven’t even seen enough scary movies in my lifetime to tell you that I don’t like scary movies. So I’m going to review a Tim Burton movie, because that’s close enough. Get ready for The Nightmare Before Christmas.
I can hear the faint protests now. “Why are you talking about that movie? It’s a Christmas movie for crying out loud!” And you’re not wrong, hypothetical nay-sayer. But it’s a Christmas movie and a Halloween movie, which makes it even better. You have a perfectly valid excuse to watch it twice! (Well actually, last week, the director Henry Selick [not Tim Burton, who knew] said definitively that it’s a Halloween movie. But my argument for both still stands.)
Much of the fun in The Nightmare Before Christmas comes from the filmmakers playing with these two sets of expectations – Halloween and Christmas. It gives you classical elements of both holidays. For Christmas, we have the fluttering snowflakes, a veritable Who-ville nestled in a cozy valley, presents (misguidedly terrifying as they may be) being tucked under decorated trees, a ghost dog that is a wonderful combination of Rudolph and Max (of Grinch fame).
But aren’t I supposed to be making the argument that this is the perfect Halloween movie? Stick with me. There are ghouls and ghosts a-plenty coming up. If you’ve never seen The Nightmare Before Christmas, but still managed to get this far into my review, here’s a quick run-down. Jack Skellington (voices: Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon), the Pumpkin King, is coming off of running yet another successfully terrifying Halloween. However, he’s bored with doing the same thing every year. Lacking more than a cursory understanding of the holiday, he decides to try his hand at Christmas – dragging all the ghastly residents of Halloween Town along for the ride. Needless to say, the werewolves and vampires aren’t great at making toy dolls or spreading happiness and joy.
We have all the classic elements of Halloween – skeletons, ghosts, scarecrows, werewolves, vampires. Every kind of creepy crawly monster you ever had a nightmare about is represented. And it’s wonderful. The love interest, Sally (voice: Catherine O’Hara) is basically rebellious, strangely beautiful, Frankenstein’s monster for crying out loud. Come to think of it, the residents of Halloween Town can probably describe it a lot better than I can.
Check out the first scene of the movie (it really gets going at 1:20).
So, one important thing I haven’t mentioned yet: SONGS! Yes, this is indeed a musical. Great, right? The songs are written by Danny Elfman, who (for people who listen to way too many movie scores while pretending to study) writes a lot for Tim Burton and is almost always fantastically eerie. The songs are clever, they’re fun, and they’re catchy. I dare you not to hum them for the rest of your life.
Can I also just point out how beautiful this movie is? It’s completely stop-motion animated – which to my limited knowledge is basically tediously moving, bit by bit, Play Doh sculptures. Play Doh! (Or whatever the fancy artist version of Play Doh is.) I mean, I can barely make a pizza out of Play Doh. And they’re making things like this:
And this:
And this, for crying out loud:
If that’s not incredible movie making, I don’t know what is.
(Also, as someone who never fully got over my circa-2009 emo music obsession, Blink 182 referenced this movie in their song “I Miss You.”)
And there we have it. Just a few of the reasons that you should not be ashamed to watch and enjoy The Nightmare Before Christmas. If you have any ideas for a movie that you want me to review, then let me know! Bad, fun, silly, adorable, enjoyable, romantic, anything that you shouldn’t be ashamed to watch and love! (Bonus cookies if it’s also on Netflix.)
Image sources: Netflix, IMDB, Giphy, Youtube