Rating:

When this movie was first released, I’m sure the thought on most people’s minds was: “Bwah?” Surely it can’t be that Tim Burton who is making an animated feature, right? Animated features are for children and the filmmaking style of Tim Burton is most definitely not the sort of thing most children can handle without needing years of psychotherapy afterward. Most people probably assumed that, since stop-motion animation holiday specials are so obviously geared toward kids that perhaps Tim Burton would hold back on the dark horrifying insanity from hell he so often utilizes. But then they actually saw the movie and realized just how wrong they were.

As the movie starts, the audience is treated to a musical number. Lest you think this indicates that this is to be a typical Disney style animated film, consider that the song is all about the virtues of Halloween, including all kinds of ghouls, clowns with tearaway faces (ack!) and the pointy toothed monster that hides under your bed (ACK!). The song also serves to introduce us to Jack. He’s the hero of the picture and is a scrawny man with a skeleton face. After the song, we’re introduced to some other important players including a girl named Sally who’s been sewn together like a Frankenstein monster. She frequently tries to poison her creator and escapes from him by actually pulling off her own arm OH MY GOD! At this point, I’m sure every kid in the theater was hiding under his seat with his eyes firmly shut, vowing never, ever, ever to go to a movie again.

Before you know it, Jack heads to a cemetery to sing another song (soon it will become clear that ths movie has so many songs it’s practically an opera, which is just another strike against it). This number’s about Jack’s discontent with Halloween; he’s tired of celebrating it and tired of spending the rest of the year planning for it. See, in this movie’s world-view, holidays are apparently individual entities that live in trees. In Jack’s tree, everything is devoted to Halloween. Oh, yes: during this song, Jack also sings “Because I am dead I can take off my head,” causing the children already cowering under their seats to wet their pants in terror.

Jack finishes his song, walks morosely through the forest and finally stumbles across the trees where the other holidays live (I guess). He makes his way into the world of Christmas and immediately launches into another song, this time about how totally rad this new world is. During the song, Jack actually sticks some Christmas lights into his eye sockets (ACK!) and did I mention I hate this movie?

Meanwhile, back in Halloweentown, Sally tries again to poison her creator/tormentor. He’s a wheelchair bound scientist with dark glasses and a terrifying platypus face. He’s clearly meant as a Dr. Strangelove parody, but the voice is too wrong to make it funny for adults and he’s too hair-raisingly awful to appeal to kids. Anyway, Sally tricks him into drinking the poison, ha ha it’s family fun.

When Jack returns to Halloweentown, he sings another freaking song extolling the wonders of Christmas. He wants the townsfolk to celebrate the holiday, but they’re none too keen about a day that doesn’t involve pus, poxes and severed limbs. To win them over, Jack tells a little lie about Santa Claus being a frightening giant lobster man made of pure evil. This sells everyone on the idea, and preparations for Christmas are underway.

Jack does some experimenting now, trying to find out what makes Christmas so special. During the course of these experiments he crushes a glass ornament with his bare hands (ACK!!) and slices open a teddy bear with glee and by now I’m sure the children hiding under their seats have actually died of fright.

Surprise surprise, Jack sings another song. I’m not sure what the song is about, but by the end Jack seems to have decided that he’ll be in charge of Christmas this year. When he makes this decision, he gets a look on his face that is scarier and more evil than anything we’ve yet seen, but in spite of that he reminds everyone that Christmas is supposed to be jolly, not scary.

So, naturally, that’s when Jack comissions three kids to abduct Santa Claus. That’s right, boys and girls, in this charming holiday classic Santa Claus becomes the hog-tied prisoner of a group of antisocial, scorpion-wielding children. The kids sing a song about the task at hand (of course) and set out looking for Santa in—what else?—a walking bathtub.

The whole town prepares for the impending yule by decorating, wrapping gifts, and trimming trees. All the while, they sing another song and blah blah, whatever. Sally makes a Santa suit for Jack, the Dr. Strangelove guy creates flying skeleton reindeer, this that and the other.

At long last it’s Christmas Eve and the kids return with Santa in their demon-tub. Jack tells Santa that he should kick up his heels and take a vacation, because Jack Skellington’s in charge of Christmas this year, buddy boy. He tells the kids to make Santa comfortable, so naturally they take him to the lair of the Oogie-Boogie, a monster who appears to be made of green burlap sacks, shoots dice and sings a Vegas lounge style number about just how scary he really is. Oddly, since he kinda just looks like a giant glowing booger, the big bad monster is significantly less scary than the alarming hell beast that’s supposed to be our hero.

As Jack prepares to launch his sleigh ride through the sky—in keeping with the movie’s jolly theme of scarring children for life, his sleigh is built from an old coffin—Sally tries to stop him by unleashing a cloud of dense fog. See, throughout the picture she’s been opposed to the whole Christmas thing, feeling certain that it’s just plain wrong, and this is her last ditch effort to stop it. Unfortunately for Sally, Jack has at his disposal a flying ghost dog with a glowing red nose, and unfortunately for the audience the dog takes his place at the head of the team of reindeer and the movie is allowed to continue.

Jack takes off successfully and Sally launches into a song about how this is all a bad idea. Even more than the others, this song really hurts the pacing of the film. If I were even a little bit interested in this movie, this is where I’d get bored. Anyhow, Jack flies his sleigh out into the real world and begins leaving frightening items for the good girls and boys. He leaves such presents as shrunken heads and giant snakes, and the screams of children follow him everywhere he goes. All the while, Danny Elfman’s devilish score accompanies his actions. Happy holidays!

Soon enough, the police shoot down the Santa imposter, leaving Jack torn, tattered, and drooped over a tombstone. All this forces him to realize that Christmas is nice but not really what he’s cut ouf for, so he rushes back to Halloweentown to fetch the real Santa so he can restore the natural order of things.

Of course, Santa’s still prisoner of the Oogie-Boogie (and apparently so is Sally, whatever), so Jack has to rescue them by performing a dance number or something. Santa fixes Christmas and removes all the scary presents from the homes of frightened children, Jack and Sally hook up to bump undead ugles, and the movie mercifully comes to a close.

So what good can we say about this film? Two things, I think. For one, it’s definitely a fine example of what stop-motion animation can do. The characters move with amazing fluidity and there are numerous sweeping camera moves the likes of which were sure never seen in The Little Drummer Boy. On that score, the movie certainly does very well.

And secondly, at least it’s over.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• The True Nature of a Familiar Song
• Eric’s Top Ten Scary Movies
• Hey, Wait!
• The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause
• The Year Without a Santa Claus