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- Movie: Coraline
- Rating: PG
- Starring: Dakota Fanning (Coraline Jones), Teri Hatcher (Mother, Other Mother), Jennifer Saunders (Miss Spink), Dawn French (Miss Forcible), Keith David (Cat), John Hodgman (Father, Other Father), Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey, Jr.), Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane)
- Written By: Henry Selick (based on Neil Gaiman book)
- Directed By: Henry Selick
- Distributor: Focus Features
- Series:
Coraline
The Film Presses All the Right Buttons By
Liana Aghajanian
February 06, 2009
Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) travels through a portal between worlds in Henry Selick's stop-motion 3D adventure CORALINE(2009).
© © 2008 LAIKA, Inc. All rights reserved.
Combine one part “Alice in Wonderland” with a heaping spoon of “Hansel & Gretel,” add a small dash of “Beetle Juice” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” stir with Director Henry Selick’s unique vision, and pop on some RealD glasses and you’re bound to have the recipe for “Coraline,” a visual feast that will leave you mesmerized by the amazing set designs to the intricate details involved in creating each character and the stunning, painstaking stop-motion animation that puts this story of an ordinary girl in an extraordinary world in a class of its own.
A curious girl with too much time on her hands, Coraline, voiced by Dakota Fanning, has recently moved to drab and dull Ashland, Oregon into the peculiar and aptly named Pink Palace Apartments (that comes with equally peculiar neighbors) with her parents, Charlie (John Hodgman) and Mel (Teri Hatcher) who positively, absolutely, don’t have any time for her.
Despite her magnificent blue hair, Coraline is just a girl, standing in a 21st century world, asking her parents to pay attention to her.
While she tries to make the best of her time, even her next door neighbor Wybie and his feral cat can’t cure her boredom. Coraline comes up short-that is until she discovers an intriguing little door that literally flips her world upside down. Having discovered an alternate and shockingly perfect “other” life, Coraline is beside herself with excitement and like any 11-year-old, she doesn’t even think twice before crawling through the hole in her wall to her whimsical, colorful and loving “Other World.”
Although Coraline receives a warning from her circus performer neighbor, the thick-accented Amazing Bobinsky (Ian McShane) and his jumping mice, she lets curiosity get the best of her and can’t resist traveling repeatedly to her “other” life, in which she finds irresistible characters that come complete with foreboding button eyes, including a domestic diva mother who caters to her every needs and a father who showers her with attention. To her delight, her neighbors are just as pleasant. The Amazing Bobinsky dazzles her with his, well, amazing act as do Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, the British once-upon-a-time theatre actresses who live below Coraline’s family with their army of Scottish Terriers who are voiced perfectly by Jennifer Saunders (Absolutely Fabulous) and Dawn French (Little Britain).
Despite the endless attention she’s given in the world away from her own distracted parents, Coraline realizes her “other” life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially when her visits take a turn for the worse. In her case, the old adage, “be careful what you wish for,” becomes terrifyingly real.
Based on Neil Gaiman’s 2002 horror novella of the same name, Coraline is the first stop-motion animated feature to be shot entirely in stereoscopic 3-D during production. Director Henry Selick’s previous films including “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “James and the Giant Peach,” both utilized the stop-motion technique, in which objects are moved by small amounts between individual frames to create the illusion of movement when put together.
In many ways, Coraline exuberates the movie-going experience to an eye-opening level, giving you a very real sense that you can feel and touch and taste everything, from Coraline’s clothes, to Wybie’s cat’s fur and the hearty meals her other mother prepares for her. This immense attention to detail was constructed during a shoot that lasted over 18 months, following two years of just pre-production. The painstaking work, including cherry blossoms made from popcorn kernels, garden lilies constructed from hand-painted silicone thimbles and 66 days spent just to animate a particularly delightful sequence of the jumping mouse circus in the Other World will definitely pay off as young and old audience alike will be enamored with Coraline’s world and probably just as equally frightened, especially for those with a fear of buttons, otherwise known as koumpounophobia.
The film contains its staple of archetype objects, events and characters, and despite Coraline’s “rabbit hole,” her own “Cheshire” cat, as well as the ghastly intentions of the Other Mother and a plethora of other details, this referencing enhances and enriches this topsy-turvy story of epic proportions. Fanning and Hatcher fit to a tee in their roles as Coraline and her mother, but the true praise falls on the shoulders of Saunders and French who provide serious laugh out loud moments throughout the film. Their previous voiceover experience, Saunders as the Fairy Godmother in “Shrek 2” and French as Mrs. Beaver in “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” perhaps lend to the amount of genuine creativity used in bringing the vivacious duo of Miss Spink and Miss Forcible to life.
The music, including “Sirens of the Sea,” which was written by Henry Selick and performed by Michele Mariana and “Dreaming,” performed by Bruno Coulais, The Children’s Choir of Nice and Teri Hatcher, is just as pleasing to the ears as the animation is to the eyes.
Mesmerizing, well-written and setting the animation bar at an unprecedented level, Coraline is not one to be missed, if only for a peck, err, peek at the Other World chicken contraption that eats kernels off of cobs and deposits popcorn from its other end into a bag for your eating pleasure.
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This movie does look enticing.