The surreal holiday classic (a double holiday classic in that its very point is a forced collision between two holidays) returns, with a fresh coat of paint and an official title that nobody but the most anal of film historians will ever use.As before, it's the tale of what happens when Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King (Elfman-sung, Sarandon-spoken), hero and emblem of the community known as Halloween Town, develops a bad case of ennui over the holiday he embodies, and elects to hijack Christmas.
Alas, neither Jack nor the ghoulish citizens of his small community quite get the point of that brighter holiday and, shall we say, suffer extreme difficulty creating the proper tone. Only Sally (O'Hara), the patchwork girl who secretly loves him, suspects that Jack is headed for disaster ... or that the real Santa Claus (Edward Ivory), kidnapped for the occasion by Jack's allies, might not fare well under the temporary "care" of the burlap sack filled with bugs known as Oogie Boogie (Page).
As before, the film is a delight, filled to bursting with visual treasures, and with songs that achieve just the proper mix of whimsy, dark humor and genuine emotion. (Count this reviewer among those who mist up when Sally sings of her unrequited love.) But how does it fare in 3-D?
Flat or 3-D—it doesn't matter all that much The answer is—surprisingly well. 3-D is extraneous, even when it works, since all films, even flat films, depend on the illusion of a third dimension anyway; generally, if you're paying attention to the 3-D, that's only because it's succeeded in knocking you out of the story.
But the characters in
Nightmare are so stylized, the tale so surreal by its very design, that the wonders of the process work quite well here. It may be some of the sharpest 3-D ever filmed, as it actually does succeed in bringing out some of the subtler bizarre details among the many that lurk in every frame. But then, the same might have been true of its simple return to a big-screen format, for those of us who've grown used to catching its wonders on home video.
As always, there are tradeoffs. The glasses are clunky, and constructed of a plastic that chafes the nose. The movie seems to go out of focus if you don't keep your head perfectly vertical—a serious hardship among those of us who tend to lean. An hour of more of dealing with it may leave your eyes burning. And, frankly, after the first 20 minutes or so, when you're deeply aware of the 3-D and looking for that depth of field, the movie's inherent wonders pull you into the story and leave you paying attention to the characters, the visuals, the humor and the songs instead.
Bottom line: It's an interesting curio.
The Nightmare Before Christmas may emerge as one of the two best movies ever given the 3-D treatment, but like the other, Alfred Hitchcock's
Dial M for Murder, it's just as good when seen "flat." The 3-D has nothing to do with it.
Private aside to the four youths who sat behind me, loudly complaining that the movie was "stoopid" and not at all the violent, gory horror movie they expected—just how do you decide what movie to see on a Friday night? With a dartboard? —Adam-Troy
