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DIRECTED BY: Henry Selick
FEATURING: Dakota Fanning (voice), Teri Hatcher (voice)
PLOT: A petulant little girl finds a parallel universe behind a hidden door in an old house, a world where her parents are more attentive, her neighbors more fascinating, and the entire universe seems set up to pamper and delight her; she can stay there forever, but of course there’s a catch.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: I attended a screening with a ten-year old and asked him if he thought the movie was “weird.” His answer: “Nah, not unless you think every fantasy movie is weird.” Smart lad.
COMMENTS: Coraline is a welcome dark fantasy for children, although its themes of evil Doppelgänger moms, frightening buttons, and implied eye-gouging are too scary for very little ones. Since it’s from Hanry Selick, the director of the borderline weird Nightmare Before Christmas, we suspect going in that the art direction and stop-motion animation will be the real stars. Selick does not disappoint, shuffling the viewer through three distinct visual styles: the dingy earth tones of real life, a brightly colored, eye-popping fantasy world, and a sinister, disintegrating universe with an insect trapped in a spiderweb theme. The storyline, and the unexpected scares once the movie shifts from childhood fantasy to childhood horror in the third act, make Coraline more than just eye candy for the kiddies.
Presented in theaters in 3-D, but the novelty doesn’t add anything significant to experience: I would have been just as happy to watch the same moving pictures tell the same story on an unabashedly flat screen. Though there’s nothing really weird to be found here, Coraline, in the best children’s’ movie tradition, is worth a trip even for adult fans of fantasy and pure escapism.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
For a Neil Gaiman story that does get plenty weird, check out his comics series The Sandman. It features a godlike family made of the embodiments of Destiny, Death, Despair, Desire, Destruction, Delirium, and the protagonist, Dream. One issue involves the dreams of sleeping cities; in another, Lucifer tongue-kisses an undead Nazi.