In a town of cobblestones, steel and fog, twisted buildings and pumpkin patches, a jack-o-lantern sky and a barren forest, the tuxedoed skeleton man orchestrates plans for each year's Halloween with the help of the ghoulish inhabitants of his town. There is no denying that Jack is the most frightening of the creatures of the scariest holiday, more so than the vampires, witches, Mr. Hyde or the Boogeyman, but a lack of fulfillment has made Jack despondent.
Going out into the forest to soul search (do skeletons have a soul, I wonder?) with his ghost dog, Zero, he stumbles upon a strange grove with a circle of trees, each bearing a door which leads to the land of another holiday. Bewitched by the image of a Christmas tree, Jack is transported to Christmastown were he becomes so enchanted by what he sees it becomes impossible for him to resist bringing the joy and color back to his home town. With a near unanimous vote, the townsfolk decide it's their turn to make Christmas, leading to wickedly fun disaster.
Shot in beautiful stop-motion animation with fabulously designed models, this movie is an example of the amazing things that can be accomplished when a group of highly imaginative people with a lot of patience sit down and set their sights on making something new and inspired. The work that goes into a project like this is pain-staking and incredibly meticulous, and although there have certainly been claymation videos before--I'm thinking of Ray Harryhausen's monsters or even the Christmas films of the 1960s like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"--but I'm not so sure it was a respectable art form until this movie came along. The extraordinary level of visual creativity held its own for many years, and even when Burton and Selick worked on other, future projects, this was the bar in which they had to hurdle yet never have.
I like this film very much. I like it not only because I was always a dark child with a taste for the macabre and I think it's fantastic to see Christmas told through a twisted, gothic eye, but I also think the film has very beautiful messages. A story like this could easily have been told through the lens that Jack is a depressed loner and a misunderstood spirit, and it could have been left at that. But I think that Burton fashioned a story about a man who felt like his existence wasn't enough and decided to do something about it. I think it is no coincidence that the main character and the film are about reinvention and stretching the limits of what it takes to make a good picture. It isn't about standing idly by and doing what makes you money and brings you notoriety, but about challenging yourself and others to think in new and interesting ways. That is what art is about, and that is why this movie is so special to me.
More than that, it boasts terrific music from Danny Elfman and a cast of lovely characters with some great voice acting from Elfman, Catherine O'Hara, Chris Sarandon, Paul Reubens and William Hickey. But then I suppose a labor of love which was three long years in the making would leave plenty of time to get everything just so. The visual wonderment is stunning; their labors were well worth the result.
Some plot points don't make much sense, such as a rag doll's obsession with Jack and their subsequent romance, nor is the separation between the real and the holiday world made clear, but given the scope of what these people have done and what a beautiful marvel this is I couldn't really care less. When an artist does something with vision and with love it reads, and it reads loudly. The fact that this movie has such a huge cult following nearly twenty years after its original release is a testament to how well that love comes across. This is a terrific film and a must see for children of all ages.
4/4
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