The Nightmare Before Christmas Empire Review

Review

Everything we have come expect from the variable Goth-hued imagination of Tim Burton as presented in stop-motion form: thus it squeals with visual delight, strewn with loveable-morbid creations, ornate Danny Elfman compositions and has a story that runs out of juice halfway through. We are lazily encouraged to just sit back and soak up the rickety gleam of its grotesquery of inspiration — dashing Jack himself is a xylophone-boned, pin-stripped lounge singer-type, his dog, Zero, has a ghostly glowing nose, while his great love Sally is a rag doll who can wilfully unthread limbs — and ignore the deficiencies in its storytelling.

It’s the schizophrenia of Burton, although the main duties of directing slow-slow process of stop-animation went to Henry Sellick, he’s less a Brother Grimm than an Edward Munch. Energy and art abound everywhere, especially in the glorious whirligigging dance scenes, except in the momentum of tale-telling. The characters are cool but limited, just more Gothic filaments for this black gown knitted for kiddiewinks with death obsessions. There’s plenty of smart referencing: German expressionism to Cure videos, but it lacks the warmth, and social detail of Nick Park’s Claymation. Park’s worlds are reflections of reality, Burton/Sellick’s is a lawless sprawl of dreams.
Verdict
All gothicky, christmassy, romantic and Burtonesque. Worth a look.


Reviewed by Ian Nathan


 After reading the review of The Nightmare Before Christmas on Empires movie review it has been astablished that this film only gained a 3/5 star rating however in my opinion I think that this film deserves more credit as it's become a loved and well known classic Burton film, they described the movie as it "squeals with visual delight" considering it was a three year project you'd hope that the visuals within this film are outstanding as it took a long period of time and determained team to create this magic stop motion animation, they've also described the film to be a "loveable-morbid creation" considering how unique the film is.
 Further more Empire mentioned "It's the schizophrenia of Burton" which suggests that Burton's imagination is abnormal and schizophrenia relates to hallucinations and delusions but this just proves that Burton's creations are one of a kind as they should be, but overall they rated the film to have "energy and art abound everywhere especially in glorious whirlgigging dance scene"