Bored with the usual, Jack Skellington accidentally stumbles on Christmastown, all bright colors and warm spirits, he gets a new lease on life, he plots to bring Christmas under his control by kidnapping Santa Claus and taking over the role.
This full-length animated movie was shot in stop motion, with all the febrile, twittery fascination that the medium exerts; it has a magic-toy shop feeling, with unexpected objects stuttering into life.
Pure enchantment, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas creates a unique and wondrous world. This awesome movie is in a class by itself for its use of stop-action animation.
Visually a macabre knockout, this 75-minute fantasy boasts some of the wittiest, most vigorous stop-motion animation effects in the history of the process.
Burton, the man who gave us Batman, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, is incapable of a conventional idea. His take on the holiday fairy tale is delightfully off the wall.
Animation is a wonderful medium, but it's almost too compatible with Burton's uninhibited approach. When literally anything goes, even the most original idea can get lost in the creative shuffle.
Part avant-garde art film, part amusing but morbid fairy tale, it is a delightfully ghoulish holiday musical that displays more inventiveness in its brief 75 minutes than some studios can manage in an entire year.
