Welp. Shit. Kinda spaced I actually reviewed this before back in 2004. So this is a Flashback review, but wholly new. Check the original written review link at the end.
What we gots here is basically an animated Tim Burton story. Henry Selick directed the stop motion gem, but yeah. It’s the gothic Halloween Christmas romantic musical sung by Oingo Boingo you never thought could exist. But here it is!
Jack Skellington, King of Halloween Town, does a great job once again scaring the crap out of all the kids for this season. But he yearns for something a bit different. A local gal named Sally likes Jack, doesn’t like to see him so discombobulated, and yearns for his bony arms or somesuch. Jack stumbles upon Christmas Town, and sees its potential, and brings a new vision of Christmas Town to their demented sensibilities. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it’s Christmas through a Halloween lens. I dig it. You probably dig it. The kids? They don’t really dig it. It’s like getting a popcorn ball for Christmas, but, like, with snakes and shit. Not cool. But if watching, yeah, kids will have fun with this too. Another DMR rarity.
This is actually a pretty damn good animated tale, taking the various holiday mythologies and mashing them up, seeing what would happen. Well done visuals that are hard to beat, because it is pretty demented but festive in its own twisted right. Probably could use a little less singing, but the tunes are kinda catchy. Oingo Boingo frontman Danny Elfman went on to do a pretty good job with doing a lot of movie scores after the band disbanded, working a lot with Tim Burton and a few other directors. The music for A Simple Plan by Sam Raimi? Fucking haunting. And Elfman did the singing here for the Skellington character, too. Despite liking music, I’m not really a musical movie kind of guy. But if I have to watch a musical, this is the kind of musical I would actually kinda like, while wearing black eyeshadow and listening to the Cure afterwards to contemplate and drinking coffee at Denny’s into the wee hours of the morning. *DMR Note: I’ve never actually ever worn black eyeliner and listened to the Cure. At least, not simultaneously.
