Rated PG for some scary images.
Recommended for ages 3 and up
Run Time: 76 minutes
Quick Take: From Halloween to Christmas (and, really, any other time of year), no family flick does a better job of sending purely delightful shivers up your spine.
The Story: Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, grows tired of his spooky duties, so he decides to fill in for Santa Claus one Christmas. Jack means well, but finding a shrunken head in your stocking is worse than getting a lump of coal.
Good If You Liked: Casper's Haunted Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Beetlejuice
Heads Up: The macabre humor has inherent elements of gore and implied violence that some viewers might find distasteful. If you don't want your children seeing a mad scientist pop open his skull and scratch his brain, this probably isn't for you. In fact, The Nightmare Before Christmas is so packed with spooky little touches that cautious parents might want to watch it on their own first. Only you will know if that joke or this image might be too much for your child.
Own It? Yes. Most good animation is detailed enough to stand up to repeat viewing, yet this stop-motion extravaganza is especially rich. Every frame is packed with hand-crafted imagination.
DVD Special Features: The 2008 digitally restored and remastered collection includes producer Tim Burton's original poem, narrated by Christopher Lee; two of Burton's early short films (Frankenweenie and Vincent); all-new audio commentary by Burton, director Henry Selick and musical designer Danny Elfman; and a handful of behind-the-scenes featurettes. The packaging features a neat squishy foam Jack Skellington head on the cover.
Trivia & Fun: What better way to kick off the trick-or-treating season than watching The Nightmare Before Christmas each October? If nothing else, the movie will give your family plenty of costume ideas.
Halloween Lovers Can't Help But Find This Nightmare a Dream Come True
Kids love to be scared -- to a point -- and few filmmakers are as skilled as Tim Burton at playing up the whimsical, delightful side of "scary" stories.
Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, which director and stop-motion specialist Henry Selick adapted from Burton's original poem and drawings, is endlessly delightful, even as it deals in icky bugs and severed limbs. If Halloween is a major holiday in your house, this will become a family classic.
Despite the trouble he causes, Jack Skellington isn't actually a villain (that would be the creepy Oogie Boogie Man, whose scariness is negated by the fact that he mostly performs Vegas-themed song-and-dance numbers).
Jack simply has a case of the blahs -- and no sense of boundaries. When he discovers Christmas Town, he has no qualms about taking over, only to learn that some of us are more skilled at certain tasks than others.
That's a nice little lesson for the bossy kid in all of us, yet the true joys of Nightmare are visual.
Halloween Town is a mournfully gorgeous place -- that drooping curlicue of a cliff Jack likes to visit has become the picture's iconic image. The residents, meanwhile, are amusingly gruesome, from the singing vampires -- they make for the world's gloomiest barbershop quartet -- to Jack's love interest, Sally, who keeps having to sew her arms and legs back on.
Kids Will Like:
The central idea that each holiday has its own town. Don't be surprised if they ask you to take them to Halloween Town for your next vacation. Zero, Jack's dog, will also charm younger viewers -- even if he is a ghost.
Parents Will Like:
The way horror archetypes have been envisioned for this family-friendly flick. Look carefully in the corners of Halloween Town and you'll catch glimpses of everyone from the Wolf Man to Igor to -- my personal favorite -- the creature from the Black Lagoon.
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