SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Michael Jackson's Halloween" is an animated short film from this year, very new, very fresh and as the title tells us this was shown on Halloween for the first time. It is a small screen production that runs a bit over 40 minutes, but still stays in short film territory by IMDb standards. There were quite a few writers and directors working on this one, especially given the runtime, but the outcome may confirm the theory of too many cooks spoiling the broth. The makers aren't too famous here, but the voice cast has some decent names, several very experienced and decorated small screen actors like Baranski, Parsons, Garrett, Cumming, Liu and Eads, only to mention a few. But they should be ashamed a bit to appear in here as this entire project looks to me like a cheap attempt to cash in with Michael Jackson's popularity still years after his death. Animation is tolerable, the story is very mediocre and forgettable. The best thing are the songs by MJ they were allowed to use, but honestly these do not resemble any kind of creativity from the writers or directors here. Overall, not an honorable project in my opinion. I would especially not recommend it to MJ's big fans as they are be the ones who will be most disappointed here. A definite thumbs-down from me. Don't watch.

nicolasgaraycochea If this was a tribute to Michael Jackson, then it failed. Sure it had his music and it had him in it, but the writing was terrible and the integration of the music was forced. It didn't seem to have much of a moral to the story other than to dance. This is an entertaining movie for kids from about 4 to 6 possibly, any older and they might catch on that this show was pointless and sad. So much for honoring the King of Pop.

jonathan_k80 I was puzzled when I first saw the trailer for this special. What does Michael Jackson have to do with Halloween, outside of the "Thriller" video, which was actually about horror movies rather than about the holiday?The characters looked cute, so I thought I would give it a try. What I saw was 42 minutes of something that played out like a movie based on a video game. The two protagonists, Vincent and Victoria, make their way through a series of challenging areas... a pumpkin patch, a haunted house, a cliff, for example. They encounter strange anthropomorphic characters along the way, some are helpful, some are villains. All this time they are fleeing from an evil magical woman named Conformity, who, like her name suggests, hates individuality and freedom of expression. She is a manifestation of the main characters' real-life job experiences; they both work for unappreciative employers who view them as mere cogs in a machine.What about Michael Jackson? Many hints are dropped throughout the special: a concealed figure with a gloved hand, a chimpanzee chauffeur named "Bubbles" (remember M.J.'s pet chimp?), a Michael Jackson- shaped icon that leads Vincent and Victoria to the next level in their journey. This leads up to an actual encounter with Michael that lasts maybe a couple of minutes.I'm still trying to figure out the rationale behind creating a Halloween special which revolves around a celebrity who died in 2009. Does he return from the dead every October 31? Has he become a zombie, a reference to the "Thriller" music video? So many unanswerable questions. I didn't hate this special. There was a vague "don't give up on your dreams" message to it, which has been overdone. But I think the concept would have had more potential as a video game, with its villains and challenging levels. I highly doubt I would view this a second time, if it is ever rebroadcast.

Jose Saucedo I don't think Michael Jackson would've approved this. Actually, I'm pretty sure MJ would've been offended by it.Cheap animation, an extremely generic story with shoe-in characters and a terrible use of Michael Jackson music and references end up presenting one of the worst animated TV specials of all time. Stay away from it.