“Being normal is vastly overrated.”

Justin’s rating: There’s no proper name for the back of the knee you say?

Justin’s review: The other day I was telling my kids that Disney movies — including TV movies — were on a whole ‘nother level in the ’90s. It felt like the decade of unpretentious and imaginative entertainment for the company, and it gave us stories such as Halloweentown. Dumb name, but interesting premise: Where do all of the Halloween monsters live during their off-season?* What would that place be like?

Marnie is your average 13-year-old who’s positively obsessed with Halloween even though her stick-in-the-mud mom (Judith Hoag, who I know as the O.G. April O’Neil from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) won’t even let her out of the house on October 31st.

There’s a reason for this — her mom is a reformed witch who doesn’t want to get sucked back into her former world. But when grandma Aggie shows up and reveals their magical heritage and how she comes from a place called “Halloweentown,” now all the kids want to go visit the land their mother hath forsaken.

Tell me what this sounds like: An ordinary kid discovers that she is secretly a witch, so she takes a secret bus transport to a hidden realm within our own and trains to use her magic for good while flying around on a broom. Let’s just remind ourselves that Harry Potter wasn’t the only one with this idea.

So Marnie and her two siblings hitch a ride to Halloweentown, where most everyone is a monster of some kind and a big fat pumpkin squats outside of city hall. It’s more light-hearted and family friendly than Tim Burton’s vision, as most of the monsters have this chubby adorable look to them. My favorite is Benny, the skeleton taxi driver whose bony face emotes quite nicely.

Things are a little… off in Halloweentown, although it’s hard to tell exactly what. There’s a dark presence on the rise, and the kids and their grandmother investigate to see if they can save the town before things go too dark and the residents turn into truly living statues. Mom and grandma get taken out by a low-rent bad guy in the third act, leaving the plucky kids to fight back.

As with a lot of Disney TV movies, the acting is, shall we say, very broad and aimed at a demographic much younger than you. As such, there isn’t a lot of actual horror in Halloweentown and only momentary creepiness (I did love the look of the dark movie theater populated by the not-quite-corpses of the residents).

You know how there are those kid movies and cartoons that are equally entertaining for adults, just perhaps in a different way? You absolutely can’t say that about this movie, which overdoses on zany and wacky. This is only interesting if you’re under seven years old, and even then, it’s probably just for the outfits. I found my attention drifting mightily, although it did snap back a little in the last act when the kids had fun exploring the town on their own.

I get that Halloweentown is special and iconic to a generation of former kids, but it’s a little too flimsy and hokey for me to embrace with all honesty. If you enjoy it, great, you trick or treat your heart out. But let’s not pretend that this is a masterclass of writing and acting. It’s no more than a flimsy plastic mask over a cool premise.

*Yes, Tim Burton already did this, shush. Why can’t we have another take on this idea?

Intermission!

• St Helens, Oregon — the town where this was filmed — totally embraces Halloweentown with a month-long celebration every year
• 13 years old is “practically an adult”
• “Hey look, I’m a potato!”
• That’s one way to make chicken nuggets
• The headless shelter sounds like a delightful place
• “See, you’re a bad influence.”
• I love Benny the skeleton psychic taxi driver
• Elvis-wannabe as a used broom salesman
• The two-headed conductor has good chemistry with himself
• That’s one delightfully creepy movie theater
• Bad dude is a really bad shot with his fireballs
• Turning a delinquent into a moving flower bed is a power move
• Well, mom’s dead
• And grandma
• Or sleeping, or paralyzed, or something
• Did that werewolf barber just drop an Austin Powers quote?
• Ghosts don’t like stereotypes
• “Fetch the bone!”