You know the feeling: too many movies, too little time. You walk down the corridor of your local multiplex, relishing the titles on the marquees and posters, and you know that many will unfortunately have to be seen on home video. If you're lucky you'll make wise choices but, occasionally, your home viewing includes that film which you regret not seeing theatrically. For me, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of those films. Having grown weary of Burton's quirkiness after the disappointing Batman Returns, I passed up Nightmare in favor of films which I now cannot recall; what a shame. Fortunately, Touchstone's optical disc presentations of this magnificent film (the previous laserdiscs and last year's DVD release) provide more than a glimpse of what was surely a wonderful theatrical experience.

Nightmare succeeds on so many levels, it's hard to keep track of them all. The quality of its ground-breaking stop-motion animation is astounding, even inspiring, in creating images which CG animation (ie. Pixar) has yet to top. While musically a little uneven, composer/lyricist Danny Elfman contributes a grand score and eloquent, often literary, songs. Most pleasingly, these elements are drawn together in service of a narrative that is at once timeless and enchanting, yet so rich in ideas that one is happily pondering its themes long after tucking the disc away.

Although his name appears above the title, Nightmare was directed by former MTV animator Henry Selick, with Burton producing this feature-length adaptation of a poem and some animation work he had done in his early days at Disney (both of which are included in the extensive supplements for the CAV laserdisc boxed set). Of course, Burton also lends the film his darkly comic sense of humor.

In telling the tale of Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloweentown, Nightmare presents a vision of each holiday springing forth from its own "town," where the inhabitants spend the entire year preparing for what they do best. The problem is that Jack (voiced by Chris Sarandon and sung by Elfman in tones both fierce and tender that are sure to please even those Oingo Boingo fans ardent in their belief that Elfman 'sold out' to cinema) has so mastered Halloween that he's grown weary and is looking for a new challenge; although he doesn't yet know it, Jack needs a little Christmas, right now.

After a particularly successful Halloween night, Jack strolls through the forest until he comes upon a new place, where the trees are emblazoned with icons of each holiday. (In just a few short moments, here the film outlines one of its most engaging themes; that each holiday is a sanctioned opportunity to indulge a particular set of passions which, throughout the year, are kept in check by the demands of society.) Delighted and curious, Jack is drawn to the image of a Christmas tree and, upon turning the doorknob beside the image, is blown into Christmastown.

This amazing sequence features the song "What's This," an enchanting ode to the wonder of new places wherein Jack exclaims "there's children throwing snowballs instead of throwing heads, they're busy building toys and absolutely no one's dead...what's this?!?" Another of the film's major accomplishments is its stunning art direction and set design, and after spending time amidst the grays and blacks of Halloweentown, Christmastown's array of colors and brightness are beautiful to behold; one can truly understand Jack's astonishment at this new world. Hooked on Christmas, Jack heads home in search of a way to make it part of his experience.

In deciding that the residents of Halloweentown will this year 'make Christmas,' Jack locks himself away in his castle as he tries to figure out the secrets of the holiday. For me, this is the film's most brilliant and enduring sequence, one which gives full expression to the nature of inquiry. The most cogent of the film's songs, "Jack's Obsession" includes these lyrics, with which anyone who has been agonizingly, yet wonderfully, puzzled can identify: "Christmastime is buzzing in my skull. Will it let me be? I cannot tell. There's so many things I cannot grasp. When I think I've got it, then at last through my bony fingers it does slip, like a snowflake in a fiery grip...These toys and dolls confuse me so...Confound it all, I love it though!" Ultimately, Jack concludes that the answer is simply to believe in Christmas, and that he could improve Christmas by being its 'king,' Santa Claus.

Another of the film's virtues is its sweet and simple love story. Sally (voiced by Catherine O'Hara), a rag doll under the oppressive watch of her creator, the Evil Scientist (wickedly performed by the great William Hickey), secretly identifies with Jack's longings. However, Sally has a vision that Jack's Christmas will go terribly wrong. Indeed, upon kidnapping Santa Claus and delivering well-intended yet nevertheless ghoulish gifts to the horrified residents of Christmastown, Jack soon realizes his folly and, with Sally's help, attempts to make Christmas right.

This last act of the film is probably its weakest, due to the unnecessary inclusion of a silly villain, Oogie Boogie, from whom Santa must be saved. It's unfortunate that Burton and writer Caroline Thompson succumbed to this most conventional of Hollywood conventions, for without it Nightmare would have been a purely unique tale...and we would have been spared the film's one musical failure, the awful "Oogie Boogie's Song." Still, the disappointing Oogie is balanced by the sharp-witted depiction of little bits of Halloween running rampant in Christmastown, and by the inspired notion that the residents of Christmastown can be downright vicious when their holiday is violated; Christmastown must have one hell of a defense budget!

Despite repeated viewings, I have lingering problems reconciling what I believe to be the apparent "message" of the film. With Jack having restored Christmas, and being reinvested in his role as Pumpkin King ("I just can't wait until next Halloween, cause I've got some new ideas that will really make them scream!"), the film seems to suggest that one should embrace their gifts, and that wandering too far from them might be disastrous. While probably wise advice, I'm not sure it's in keeping with the soul of the film, its spirit of yearning and adventure.

Although adults will likely find the film enjoyable and insightful, Nightmare is nevertheless positioned as a children's film, and while this "moral" encourages one to identify and utilize their talents, I wonder whether it also discourages the desire to try new things. Of course, if viewed strictly as a treatise on the holidays and their societal function, this may simply be a reminder that the urges indulged on Halloween are not suited to Christmas! In any event, these are worthwhile questions to consider, and I can't think of a better forum for raising them than this wonderful film.

Nightmare was among the first DVDs released late last year by Disney, who at the time was licensing only its Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures product for DVD, preferring to wait until the abomination known as DIVX for its more traditional animated fare. Slightly letterboxed at the preferred ratio of 1.66:1, the image is spectacular, virtually flawless. (If your DVD player has an animation mode...use it!) The previous laserdiscs of this film, particularly the three-sided CAV edition, were remarkable, and the DVD format eliminates the occasional dropout (and annoying side-breaks) while providing colors that, in this film, are unbelievably stable and incredibly vivid.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is not dramatically different from the laserdisc's Dolby Pro-Logic track, but there is greater bass response and an occasional split-surround effect (when the hockey-playing vampires whack tiny pumpkin-pucks with their sticks, your rear speakers are in for a treat!); both tracks are excellent. The DVD also includes a 2.0 French track and Spanish subtitles. Disappointingly, despite the wealth of information previously made available in the CAV laserdisc edition*, Disney has seen fit to include only a lame "original theatrical trailer," which in fact is nothing more than a brief "coming to home video" advert that appeared on Disney videocassettes in the months prior to Nightmare's home video debut.

For this Disney must be taken to task, charging premium prices ($29.95 msrp) and offering less material than the lower-priced special edition discs of Warner/New Line. While I hope the voluminous material included in the laserdisc boxed set will someday be available on DVD, true fans of the film will find the laserdisc invaluable for studying the film, and the DVD essential for a high-quality, uninterrupted screening of the film...preferably sometime between Halloween and Christmas.-Vincent Suarez

*A CLV 5.1 and DTS LaserDisc are also available.