Review of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) by Oxana . — 31 Dec 2012

I never saw Nightmare Before Christmas growing up and watching it now it's hard not to wonder how it turned into one of the biggest cult films from the 90s and the pop culture phenomenon it is today.

I'm not huge on musicals, and being that's pretty much all there is to Nightmare, I was left underwhelmed, even if I did appreciate the darker slant it skews Christmas as. The visuals are pretty neat and the songs decent (though, let's face it, Fall Out Boy's cover of What's This? is way better than Elfman's), but the story is thin and there's surprisingly little emotion at play.

To be honest, there's many elements more effective in Tim Burton's original poem than when they're stretched out on the screen, which is kind of telling, even in something so short. Burton is always a guy I've liked a lot more in theory than actuality, which once again proves to be the case here.