We in the Otter Household are divided in feeling on this film, which means that I like it and Mr. Otter doesn't. He watches it with me every year or two because he's a nice guy, but it just doesn't float his boat, although I overheard him humming music from it today, and there are very quotable lines ("BUNNY!" being one of our favs).

The good things: wonderful claymation, really interesting characters, almost scary but not quite, really kind of heartwarming, some nice songs, fun to watch.

On the other hand, there's Danny Elfman...this is one of his earliest efforts (hard to believe that this movie is 11 years old as I write, oh my!), and so his music is not as derivative as it often is in later flicks...still, this is the one that screams out LOOK! I CAN DO KURT WEILL!!! about every five seconds, and that is indeed kind of hard to take.

OK, call me picky. But I do love this movie. I love it and its message and the love story and a lot of the background details, and am willing to put up with a lot of Elfman for that. And ol' Danny really doesn't do a bad job singing Jack's songs, either. See this one for some holiday cheer, it really is fun. Elfman aside.