Disney’s 1998 HalloweenTown was amazing. HalloweenTown is a children’s film about Halloween fanatic Marnie Piper (Kimberly J. Brown) finding out she’s actually a witch.She travels to the very magical and dated HalloweenTown to help her witch grandmother (Debbie Reynolds) fight an evil force that is infecting the residents of the town.
The characters in this story sound boring but are surprisingly delightful. Marnie is a 13 year old who loves Halloween, and her family. She has two younger siblings Dylan (a cookie cutter nerd), and Sophie (just a generic little kid). The family only has one parent who has an interesting backstory of her own. Gweyn, the mother is also a witch but hides her powers and the powers of her children from them in attempt to keep them normal. She has proper reasons behind her motivation to do this, the children were born in the mortal world, their father was a mortal, she’s simply looking out for the wellbeing of her children so the viewer can’t really get angry with her. The grandmother character is a lot of fun, she’s basically the best stereotypical embodiment of a grandma you can image. She gives the kids presents, she’s very protective over them, she teaches them things and is just well casted. Even the villain character at the end is likable before and after his backstory is revealed. The viewer almost wants to sympathize and side with him rather than the protagonists, considering what the mother character did to him.
The movie is soaked in Halloween imagery, every extra has some weird Party City makeup on or they’re wearing so wacky costume. Everyone involved in this project was all in and it shows. While most children’s movies tend to hold back on producing a memorable, quality product because it’s “just for kids” HalloweenTown does not at all which is why is so loved by those who saw it as children. The only negative things I can say about the movie would be the music, they only have one song that plays during the movie. The song is very goofy and fun which doesn’t fit every scene. Specifically a scene where the grandmother is explaining to Sophie that HalloweenTown was created so supernatural creatures would stop being tormented by humans. All at while a silly upbeat song is playing in the background. The song also gets annoying really fast. The film isn’t aging well when it comes to visual effects, and makeup but that’s beyond the movie’s control. Overall HalloweenTown is a great movie and a festive way to get excited for Halloween. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv9uUdtRUnM here's the song
This is a great review of this film! Nice balance between objective and subjective analysis, especially when you talk about the motivation of the characters. Your connections to other texts within the genre (re: characters, aesthetics, and tone) are on point, and it helps to ground this text in terms of its companions. Great choice to include the song (which will likely get stuck in my head. Consider how you can use logical transitions between your paragraphs to even further cement the analysis. Also-- is this Good Good? Bad Good? Keep that clear within the post
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