40 Years, 40 Disney Movies: Counting Down to Daddy’s Birthday Night 17 – The Nightmare Before Christmas!

Hallooooooo everyone!

Apologies for the small drought of postings. Work has been B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Like, real work. I do have a life outside this blog you know. But you are in luck because being that this past weekend was Halloween, we went ahead and combined our Disney night with this most candiest of holidays to create a super mashup SPOOKYTOWN COUNTDOWN TO MY BIRTHDAY HALLOWSTRAVAGANZA!!111one one

And I mean, OF COURSE we did Nightmare Before Christmas. Doy.

And since time is short, we had to cram all this awesomeness into a Friday night after school/work. It was just the four of us and we had limited time but we still managed to kind of kick ass at this Disney night thing. We are true heroes.

To set the mood, we were already pretty well-decorated since the next day was Halloween but we still added some Disney touches:

The food

For food, we had mummy dogs as the main course. We could literally just make hot dogs and Pillsbury crescent rolls the meal for like every Disney night. So versatile. And delicious. And…healthy?

Wait.

We also had some gummy worms (as a nod to Oogie Boogie) and candy corn (as a nod to the fact that I love candy corn). And we had a big bowl of bag of bones Cheetos. These things were seriously MADE for a Nightmare Before Christmas night.

Also – we had jack-o-lantern fries (well, smiley face fries) and Oogie Boogie beans. And for dessert? Halloween whoopee pies courtesy of mi madre. Which is Spanish. For “my madre.”

The activity

For the activity, we carved our pumpkins. We had three – one for Owen, one for Myles and one for me to carve. Owen did a Baymax pumpkin and Myles started with Darth Vader but moved quickly to a Jack Skellington. And I tried to pull off a freehand Oogie Boogie. I think it came out ok, but I put the eyes too close to the mouth. Oh well…we are our own worst critics, right? I always give myself a thumbs down. Except when I sing Journey in the car. Five star performance literally every time. Every. Single. Time.

The movie

Can you believe this movie came out over 20 years ago? Whattt?? So insane. Particularly because it feels so fresh and unique still to this day.  In fact, it was so unique when I first saw it on release that I didn’t really know what to make of it and didn’t immediately fall in love with it.  The visuals and the music were unexpected and did not appeal instantly to my idiot teenage brain. Time (and numerous subsequent viewings) have changed this obviously.

However, their unexpectedness is a lot of what makes this movie so great. One reason I enjoy watching this movie is that there really is no other movie quite like this one. Yes, there are other Tim Burton movies. Other stop motion movies. Other musicals. But not like this one. This remains one of Burton’s finest. It is truly a beautiful film to watch and, unlike some of his other films, it’s not simply creepy for creepy’s sake. This story works so well with how Tim Burton makes movies. I mean, it’s set in Halloweentown for chrissakes.

And the music…it’s super duper. Songs like “This is Halloween” and “Kidnap the Sandy Claws” do a good job depicting the chaotic vibe of Halloweentown while “What’s This” and “The Town Meeting Song” are insanely good storytelling songs and really get to the heart of what Jack is looking to accomplish. But there are seriously beautiful songs on display here as well – “Sally’s Song” is haunting (Fiona Apple’s version ain’t bad either).

But as usual with Disney, the story is really what makes this film truly great. Jack’s journey from malaise to awakening to acceptance is really the heart of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Yes, on a surface level it’s fun to watch Halloween and Christmas come up against one another but I think we can all relate to Jack’s “is this all there is?” moment. We all hit that point at some time. This movie has always reminded me of Kermit the Frog singing “it’s not easy being green.” At the start, he feels trapped by his lot in life but by the end of the song, he realizes being who he is is special and important. This is where Jack is by the end of the movie as well. He realizes that he is good at Halloween. And Halloween is important in its own way. And it’s where we all need to get to. We can’t be everything, but we are all something.

So on that note, I hope everyone had a happy Halloween. Here is a pic of the boys (with Emily…whom you have all met before) in their Halloween costumes. In a cemetary. After 3 hours of trick-or-treating. I know. I am an awesome parent.