Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Must See Movie...

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

I love this movie, must watch it every October. It's ICONIC, definitely the best of the whole franchise.

Those three generations of Cromwell women, Debbie Reynolds, Judith Hoag, and Kimberly Brown are once again fighting some evil forces that are trying to keep the world of Halloween away from the human world. This time it's a world exchange program that's at stake.Young Kimberly Brown has the bright idea to have some Halloweentown kids come to the human world incognito as humans, the better not to instantly shock people to foster greater understanding. Of course the powers that be in Halloweentown remembering their experiences with humankind before are very skeptical.But Kimberly believes so much in the project that she bets the family magic powers on it. The bet comes due appropriately on Halloween. The Magic Kingdom has developed its own nice little franchise in the Halloweentown movies to go along with the various incarnations of High School Musical. Debbie Reynolds and the rest of the cast are as enjoyable as they were in the first Halloweentown film. And if the school looks familiar Zac Efron and company sung and danced there. And Lucas Grabeel of the High School Musical films is also part of this cast as one of the Halloweentown transfer kids.Halloweentown High is good viewing during goblin season.

As both a fan of the first two Halloweentown movies and a student of Communication Arts, I was very much looking forward to the third movie in the Halloweentown series, especially since said series is supposed to end as a trilogy. However, the movie's narrative proved that this is not the case.The first problem one encounters is that the flow of the story doesn't match up with that of the previous two movies. Sure, the flow of the trilogy goes from a childish good and evil narrative in the first move, through a revenge plot in the second movie that fits Marnie's status as teenager, into a reasonably adult diversification theme that metatexturally speaks of Marnie's selfishness. The problem, however, lies in the fact that our young protagonist goes about this in a way that is not structured in the exchange students' best interests.SPOILERS BELOW!Furthermore, Gwen, Marnie's mother, uses magic. This may not seem like a big thing to a first-time watcher, but throughout both earlier movies, it has been proven that Gwen actively *chooses* not to use her powers, especially while in the human world. The frivolous use of magic in a scene where Gwen and Marnie interact isn't only odd, it's actively confusing. The only times Gwen used spells in previous movies was as self-defense.Also, certain characters who had a strong presence in the first two movies were noticeably absent. One can understand the under-use of Emily Roeske's Sophie, because the character is noticeably younger than her siblings and therefore probably still in middle school, but the absolute absence of Luke is inexcusable. This is a character that not only plays a major role in the first two films and is a fan favorite, but also the character who throughout the first two movies was positioned as having a crush on Marnie and, in the second movie, being her friend. While one can understand that contract negotiations and so on may have prevented Phillip Van Dyke from appearing in the movie, to completely forget the character's presence and importance is unforgivable. Even a single line explaining the character's absence would have been preferable. That would have explained why the parents and other more sophisticated viewers of DCOM didn't get any sort of triangle between Marnie, Luke, and Marnie's human boyfriend, which would have been infinitely preferable to the plot we were presented.In conclusion, while the story is good enough on its own, and the costumes and special effects are magnificent, the movie's shortcomings handicap its impact. The movie is skewed, and appears to have nothing to do with Halloweentown so much as Marnie's selfishness in particular. This is, by far, the weakest of the three movies, while it had the potential to be the best. Disney undershot its goal this time, folks. 3/10 stars, for beautiful costumes and set design.

I watched this movie knowing how much of a chance it had to be awful. The most recent Disney Channel original movies have been complete crap (case and point, The Cheetah Girls). And this movie is the third of two great movies already, and I was shocked to find that it was actually good! The only complaint I have is that there is no mention of Cal or Calabar, the villains from the first two. The story starts out with Marnie (Kimberly J. Brown) and her grandmother Aggie (Debbie Reynolds) are planning to bring kids from Halloweentown, disguise them as humans and have them attend a high school in the mortal world, to prove monsters that live in Halloweentown aren't dangerous. But of course, there is a problem, if Marnie can't prove to the humans that the monsters are harmless, she, and her family will lose all their powers.When the monsters start attending the school, they all stick together and aren't interacting with their fellow human schoolmates, so Marnie suggests they do different extra curricular activities. Then, they start making friends. Then, they sign up to make a haunted house for their school Halloween Carnival, but they make it so it is a wax museum with wax monsters sitting, drinking tea, and eating cookies trying to how that monsters mean no harm. No kid at their school is amused by this. And during this whole time, the monsters are being chased down by evil knights, which leads to a surprising revelation. This Disney Channel movie has surprisingly good computer special effects. Considering their latest effects-laden original movie, Zenon: Z3, had the worst computer effects I've ever seen. Another thing great about this movie is that Disney seems to have a knack for getting the same actors back for their sequels to their original movies. Kimberly J. Brown, Debbie Reynolds, Judith Hoag, Joey Zimmerman, and Emily Roeske are all back, and have been in all three Halloweentown movies. If you haven't seen the original Halloweentown movie and its sequel, I would see those first, because there are some things that might not make sense. You have to see them in order to get the entire story. All in all, this is the best original movie Disney Channel has produced in quite a while. 9/10