Review of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) by Kevin M — 24 Dec 2012

The Nightmare Before Christmas is arguably the best showcase of Tim Burton's signature dark and loopy style; however, this is definitely not one of his strongest films. That may be due to the confusion that this is not a Tim Burton movie.

The film introduces itself as "Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas." Burton merely produced it and wrote some of the script: this is still Henry Selick (the actual director)'s film.

I have to praise it for it's awesome style and concept, which is colliding Christmas and Halloween. It's also a musical, which is pretty cool considering how memorable some of the songs are (especially This is Halloween).

Unfortunately, it's not as exciting as it should be: for a film of an extremely lean 76 minutes, it kind of drags. There is also no connection of any kind whatsoever to any of the characters. In the end, The Nightmare Before Christmas may look and sound great, but the story and characters have no lasting effect on the audience.