THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Old-fashioned and rural like countless other versions, with an elfin Saint Nick in a brown fur suit, Trimby's Night Before Christmas is a visual catalog of the contents of a busy home, which she likes to show in doll-house cutaway. But the pictures are busy too, demanding but not rewarding scrutiny; there's no pleasing style to the interiors, and for all the activity, there is less sense of life or motion than even Tasha Tudor's scampering pets (1975) provided. Superfluous.