1993 animated action, dir. Henry Selick, Chris Sarandon, Catherine
O'Hara: IMDb. The bored ruler
of Halloween Town discovers Christmas, and wants to do that too.
I don't have nostalgia for this; I saw it for the first time
recently. That probably makes a difference.
This originated as a poem by Tim Burton in 1982, and was considered
for a TV holiday special, but Disney (for whom Burton was working)
rejected it because it was "too weird". They later said the same about
Burton, and once he'd gone away and done the hard work of becoming
marketable, Disney was much more interested in putting out something
with his name on it.
So each (American) holiday has its own pocket realm, and Jack the
ruler of Halloween is bored with the same old thing. But while
wandering out on the fringes of his kingdom he stumbles into Christmas
Town, and decides that his people can do that too. Of course they
can't, and some of them are actually villains, and Jack will learn an
Important Lesson (but get a happy ending anyway).
It may be that my taste in musicals runs more towards your Guys and
Dolls or Fiddler on the Roof, essentially a play in which people
sometimes burst into song. This is a different style, with almost no
spoken dialogue; anything more than a quick exchange of lines is sung
as a recitative, in a style that's much more about delivering the
clever words than it is about singing a song. (Danny Elfman, who wrote
all the music, also provides Jack Skellington's singing voice.) But I
find myself spontaneously breaking into fragments of Luck Be A Lady
or Adelaide's Lament, many years after I last saw them performed,
and nothing here was catchy enough for me to remember it even a week
or two later. Everything else is subordinated to serve the music, and
the music just isn't that great.
But I think this was loved because in its day it was something a bit
different from the same old, the faded inbred descendants of Charlie
Brown turned out by uninspired animators. Visually it's great. But
apart from the music, watching in the present day I can't help noticing that
the most significant female character by far is in the Fun Police
role, the adult whose job is to respond to anything that might be
enjoyable with some reason why that's a bad idea (and in this case to
be ignored). You're too good for that manchild Jack, dearie, even if
he does come with his own set of darning needles.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.