Director: Henry Selick
Cast: Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It’s one of the clearer memories I have of being excited about a movie as a kid, being a little disappointed by it at the time*, and then realizing within a few short years that I was a fool.
Did I Like It: Just as the Star Wars prequels might be the most cogent argument for the auteur theory in semi-modern moviemaking, this film is its antithesis. If the director is the author of the film, then this should be thought of as Henry Selick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.
But it really, really isn’t.
It makes Tim Burton such a fascinating filmmaker. He can have such a singular, easily identifiable point of view. In some films (Batman Returns (1992), Edward Scissorhands (1990)) that vision comes through. In others, (Batman (1989), Planet of The Apes (2001)) he’s a hired hand, meant only to offer his name, and almost no artistic vision to the the proceedings.
And then there’s this film, which might be the most fully realized manifestation of the Tim Burton image, and he wasn’t the director.
I’m not going to say that this is my favorite movie of all time, or even that it ranks in the top twenty. Ultimately pure Burtonianism might work in small doses, but it is one of the most successful mastering of a film succeeding on its own terms. There is never a moment of doubt—unlike Jack Skellington’s (Elfman singing, Sarandon for everything else) arc—as to what this film wants to be. Every single decision serves the mise en scene.
And if that wasn’t enough to recommend the film: I’ve even started to like the songs. Amazing what thirty years can accomplish.
*Not one commercial made it clear that I was walking into a musical. Nine-year-olds really need to be warned about such things.