GEE WHIZ: IT'S 'STOP-ACTION' AGAIN

By Harper Barnes

From St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10.28.2000

(This is a reprint of Harper Barnes' review in the Post-Dispatch of Oct. 22, 1993. The movie has been re-released.)

There is no question that The Nightmare Before Christmas is an astonishing visual accomplishment. Unfortunately, it is not a very good movie.

Tim Burton conceived and produced the animated feature about Halloween ghosts and goblins who take over Christmas, at one point hanging poor old Santa Claus from what looks like a meathook.

The decidedly uncheerful movie was made using "stop-action" techniques that involve photographing a series of minute movements by dolls and hand puppets. A typical scene, according to the filmmakers, could take several days to shoot and last for only five seconds.

Gee whiz.

In the hands of some Eastern European masters, stop-motion animation has created some fine adult animated films, like Jan Svankmajer's spooky version of Alice in Wonderland. But Burton's movie is basically a charmless and muddled tale that aims at a target somewhere in the vast gulf between Franz Kafka and Walt Disney and hits nothing.

The movie is filled with snakes and spiders and demons, so effectively rendered that they will probably scare the daylights out of younger children.

For the rest of us, except for dedicated students of animation techniques, I'm afraid there is a lot less to The Nightmare Before Christmas than meets the eye.