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PLOT: Bored with horror, Jack "The Pumpkin King" Skellington, the leader of Halloweentown, accidentally discovers the existence of Christmas Town and misunderstands its meaning. He sets about kidnapping "Sandy Claws" and creating his own gothic version of the Holiday with disastrous results.
As original a vision as anything Tim Burton ever came up with, The Nightmare Before Christmas holds up amazingly well 12 years after its initial release -- even without the new gimmick of Disney's digital 3-D.
But Nightmare 's unique stop-motion treat seems particularly well-suited to the cutting-edge 3-D effect, probably because the characters are "real objects" rather than drawings or computer renderings.
This isn't to say that every bit of horrific minutiae in the vermin-infested scare-zone called Halloweentown literally jumps out at you. More often, specific objects seem to have been given the treatment. But Burton and director Henry Selick's busy tableau gives the techies plenty to work with, and probably still will 20 years from now.
But this little operetta Danny Elfman's score supplants virtually all the dialogue) holds up well on grounds of pure fun-andscariness. What can you say about a movie where the mad scientist" confronts a head-scratching problem by lifting of his cranium and actually scratching his brain?
Nightmare introduces us to Halloweentown, a gleeful enclave of vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghouls, etc., who elect a two-faced mayor, but whose true fealty is to Jack "The Pumpkin King" Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon), an impossibly sticklike figure with an existential crisis. Seems he's bored with horror.
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Jack also has an admirer, Sally (Catherine O'Hara), a full-sized rag doll who'd follow Jack to hell and back if they didn't sort of already live there. To stalk her hero, she repeatedly escapes from her inventor" by feeding him deadly nightshade.
By accident, after one halfhearted Halloween, Jack falls into a hole and discovers Christmas Town, a town awash in good vibes. Misunderstanding the meaning of the holiday, he sets about kidnapping "Sandy Claws" and creating his own goth version with disastrous results.
Favourites: Santa's kidnappers, demonic children named Lock, Shock and Barrel (Paul Reubens, O'Hara and Elfman), and the ultimate bad guy Oogie Boogie (Ken Page), who sings joyously like a long-lost member of the The Four Tops about the prospect of torturing Santa.
If anything, pop culture has caught up to Burton's vision in the ensuing years. This is entertainment for even the most jaded Nintendo kid.
BOTTOM LINE: We'll take any excuse to see Tim Burton's most demented vision on the screen again, but Disney's digital 3-D seems particularly suited to the realobject nature of Nightmare 's unique stop-motion animation. It's startling how well it all holds up.
(This film is rated PG)