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For an animation fan as myself "Nightmare Before Christmas" has much to offer: Great musical scoring and songs, meticulous stop-motion animation that would make George Pal envious, wonderfully macabre set and character design as well as sense of humor that would make the master cartoonists of the genre Edward Gorey, Charles Addams and Gahan Wilson proud.
The "Mr. Oogie-Boogie" song sequence is direct homage to George Pal's work and could easily have been by the master himself.
Yet the movie falls flat for me: the Jack Skellington character garners no sympathy at all, there's a distasteful mean-spirited undertone that flavors the movie ever-so-slightly, the "just-be-yourself" solution to Jack's dilemma to trite/overused/ etc.
Mean-spirited you say? Well for example, the gags with the "Christmas" gifts are initially funny but then it appears that these things might actually be lethal and then the gags lose their humor.
This disc is in my collection because of the animation. If the story elements worked better for me it would be in my all-time-favorite category.
If you love stop-motion/puppet animation I recommend "The George Pal Puppetoon Movie". George Pal pioneered and refined the replacement method of stop-motion animation that Tim Burton used.
Unfortunately many of George Pal's Puppetoons are not "politically correct" and stand little chance of seeing the light of day on DVD.
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