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The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)








The Nightmare Before Christmas was one of my earliest experiences of going to the cinema. I remember seeing this with my brother back in 1993. I remember seeing it after Christmas and it had been snowing as we were waiting for our dad to pick us up. The story sees Jack decide that he wants to make Christmas more spooky and decides to traumatise children as much as possible before discovering the error of his ways. The character of Jack is quite good. He is seen as a hero but the repetitiveness of just working on Halloween gets to him in a way that repetitive working situations get to us all and his decision to try and steal Christmas doesn't come across as mean or greedy but something that might work quite well. 

The animation is still amazing 32 years after I first saw it. The screening I was at was a 3D one and I am not entirely sure that the film needed to be in 3D. They had applied the process to most of the film as every so often I took my 3D glasses off and things were blurry but I don't think that 3D added anything to the film. The screening was I would say 80% full which for 10:20 on a Sunday morning was very surprising. There were plenty of children in and apart from the occasional cry, the children were well behaved and better behaved than some adults I have come across in screenings this year. They seemed to be enjoying the film and its nice to know that even films over 30 years old have the power to keep young people’s attention.

Something that I have a new appreciation for is the music. This year has seen me take a keener interest in music scores and songs and the songs in this film are great. ‘This is Halloween’ is my favourite but all the songs are fun. This was the era where Tim Burton and Danny Elfman were at their peak creative wise and they do what is expected in a musical and that is make the songs memorable and they achieve this. 

This is a great film in my opinion. I have always been a fan but there was something about seeing it at the cinema that made this a five star film for me. It might not be directed by Tim Burton but it is definitely a Tim Burton film. This was a Tim Burton film where the style works with the substance. The aesthetics scream Tim Burton and this along with Edward Scissorhands, Batman and Beetlejuice showed how good Burton was. The animation is still stunning after 32 years, the songs are memorable and the story manages to do a lot in just 70 minutes or so. This is a film that I love not just for nostalgia reasons but for the fact that it is a great Christmas film.  


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