Here comes a little macabre adventure. But man, when that awkward boy and his weird little insect friends started making balls from the peach and eating it. It was definitely the ewww moment for me.

A Tim Burton-produced Roald Dahl adaptation that does its best to capitalize on the success of The Nightmare Before Christmas via eccentric stop-motion animation. The love that seeped from every pore of Nightmare isn't here, however, and no amount of curious character design can account for that. It doesn't help that the Dahl story itself has been altered to suit a more typical film structure, stripping away much of the free-wheeling zaniness that made the book so unpredictable and entertaining. That can't have been for a lack of time, as the film is already dreadfully short: barely more than an hour, with some serious padding at both ends. The awkward blend of animation and live-action doesn't work especially well, either. Despite one great casting decision (AbFab's Joanna Lumley as the bone-thin, witchy Aunt Spiker), the flesh-and-blood scenes feel under-produced and B-grade, a sharp contrast to the more lush, professional efforts on the other side of the coin. At a glance, the quirky stylings that typify Burton's work seem a great match for Dahl's oddball stories. As a promo slick or movie poster, it's thumbs up all the way, but too much is missing to consider the whole effort as much more than a well-intentioned miss.

The book is so much better but I do like the incorporation of Jack Skellington as a pirate.

Such a unique look for it's time, while being dark and unsettling in its design. The story and character development here is almost non existent. Yet somehow this is also a musical?? Overall, it was worth watching, although I would pair it with something as it's fairly short.

I watched this as a kid and remembered it much differently in my head. It’s a bit more bonkers than I remembered, which is both good and bad. Not one I plan on revisiting again anytime soon, but I’m glad I have a clearer memory of it now. Rating: 3/5 - 7.5/10 - Worth Watching