Coraline (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy w/ 3D) [Blu-ray] (2009)
![Coraline (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy w/ 3D) [Blu-ray] (2009)](http://www.shopping2d.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/coraline-blu-raydvd-combo-digital-copy-w-3dbluray2009.jpg "Coraline (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy w/ 3D) [Blu-ray] (2009)")
Coraline (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy w/ 3D) [Blu-ray] (2009)
Coraline (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy w/ 3D) [Blu-ray] (2009) Reviews
This uncommon animation starts with tween-aged angst, the kind that demands independence but still wants mom and dad close by. Her busy parents don’t have much time for her, though, and her new, remote home doesn’t offer much reward for her explorations (other than some rather kooky neighbors). So, even if it’s not wholly conscious, Coraline wishes for a nicer place and parents that pay more attention.
As the movie’s tagline says, “be careful what you wish for.” Like Alice down the rabbit hole, Coraline finds a secret passage to a more magical place. Soon, however, the magic turns dark. That’s where the brilliant animation really comes into its own. The stop animation (or at least the look of it) bring to mind Tim Burton with a macabre touch of Brothers Quay. You know your child best – skittish ones might find some of the imagery a bit much. Still, kids’ stories (like Alice in Wonderland) have always had dark edges. That deliciously spooky sense, plus some great animation, really set this movie apart from the usual.
Nobody can drench a book in creepy, dank atmosphere like Neil Gaiman, infused with humor and more than a little horror.
Fortunately that flavour is kept alive in the movie adaptation of “Coraline,” brought to life by the talented Henry Selick. It’s a haunting little dark fairy tale full of decayed apartments, dancing rats and eerie soulless doppelgangers, as well as a gutsy heroine who finds herself in this ominous “other” world.
Newly moved into an aged apartment, Coraline (Dakota Fanning) is bored. Her parents are too busy to do anything with her, and her neighbors are either insane or boring. The one exception is Wybie, a boy who annoys her no end.
It’s the sort of relentlessly dull world that any little girl would want to escape from — until Coraline does. She encounters a plastered-up door and a colourful wormhole, leading to a doppelganger of new home. In fact, it’s so similar that she has a button-eyed “other mother” (Teri Hatcher) and matching “other father,” (John Hodgman) as well as great food, games, a shimmering magic garden, a chorus of circus rodents and magic toys.
At first Coraline is fascinated by the other world, especially since her other parents are as attentive as her real ones aren’t. Then she finds her real parents sealed inside a mirror. With the help of a sarcastic cat, Coraline ventures back into the other world. But with her parents and a trio of dead children held hostage, Coraline’s only hope is to gamble with her own freedom — and she’ll be trapped forever if she fails.
Neil Gaiman’s book “Coraline” is a brilliant dark fairy-tale vibe — decayed apartments, dead children, spiderwebs, beetles, disembodied hands, button eyes, and an insectile button-eyed woman who wants to claim Coraline for herself. It’s a fairy tale world that turns into a nightmare realm where souls are lost and horrific things scuttle in the shadows.
Most directors would turn the story into a cutsy, unscary affair… but not the director of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “James and the Giant Peach.” Instead, Selick gives it a dark, cobwebby atmosphere, brilliant colours and surreal details (the button eclipsing the moon). And it’s full of lovely details that could have been silly (the creepy-crawly claw hand) yet work brilliantly.
The story starts off as merely surreal, but grows more ghastly and eerie as the movie unwinds — and in the last third, the slow-moving story suddenly spins into a thoroughly spooky territory, and a truly terrifying climax where the Other Mother shows her true self. And along the way, there are plenty of wonderfully creepy moments — the three ghosts in a rotting bedroom/mirror, the offering of buttons and thick black thread, weird circus acts, and much more. The horror is subtle, the delicious creepiness is not.
Coraline — the Alice in this Notsowonderland — is a wonderful little heroine: strong, sensible, self-sufficient but still fairly freaked out about what is happening around her. Normally I’m not crazy about Dakota Fanning, but voice-only she’s quite good in this role.
The sarcastic cat is a wonderful counterpoint, and the movie’s original character Wybie makes a nice companion (albeit an extraneous one). And the other mother is the stuff of nightmares — she’s utterly inhuman and merciless, and by the movie’s climax she’s become the stuff of nightmares. Oh, and French and Saunders make a pair of fun cameos as the kooky neighbors.
“Coraline” is a frighteningly beautiful fantasy, filled to the brim with delightfully bizarre visuals and one-of-a-kind characters. Some may say that it’s too dark for young children, and indeed, it is, in essence, a family-friendly horror movie. But I suspect that most children will find it more dazzling than scary; through the painstaking but rewarding process of stop-motion animation, writer/director Henry Selick retains the essence of the original novel by Neil Gaiman, crafting a tale that’s just creepy enough to thrill audiences without sending them running out of the theater. It’s also presented in 3-D, although the process isn’t as impressive as you might think it is. I stared at the screen through a pair of special glasses, and yet I never flinched or covered my eyes when something came at me from off the screen. No matter–dimension isn’t important as long as a fun story is being told.
With “Coraline,” we’re once again invited to explore an alternate world hidden amongst our own, specifically within the walls of a house (Gaiman has tackled this subject before with films like “Mirrormask” and stories like “The Wolves in the Walls”). In this case, the alternate world is a lot like ours, except it’s better. That’s exactly why it appeals to Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning), an adventurous young girl leading a very dull life. Her parents (voiced by Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) are too busy writing articles for a gardening catalogue to take any notice of her. She’s surrounded by eccentric but boring neighbors in her new home, which was once a Victorian house but is now an apartment complex. There’s nothing worth exploring inside or outside. Worst of all, she never feels as if anyone is listening to what she’s saying. Maybe it would help if they didn’t keep calling her Caroline.
Then she discovers a small door hidden behind a wall of an old parlor, a door that covers a tube-like portal leading to the alternate version of our world. Things are so much more interesting there, including the people, who are reflections of the people in Coraline’s world. There’s one small physical difference: They all have black buttons instead of eyes. When we first see Coraline’s Other Mother (also voiced by Teri Hatcher), we immediately sense that something sinister lurks behind that vacant, artificial stare; she’s a little too sweet-natured, a little too accommodating. It’s as if she wants Coraline to stay in this alternate world forever, not as a daughter, but as a prized possession. Coraline’s suspicions are confirmed when the Other Mother hands her a box containing two black buttons, a spool of thread, and a needle.
There comes a point when Coraline must not only rescue her real parents, who have been kidnapped, but also free the souls of three dead children, who have been imprisoned in the alternate world for who knows how long. With the help of a special green stone, Coraline will play a game with the Other Mother, a hide-and-go-seek game, a finding-things game. If she loses … well, let’s just say that losing won’t be a good thing for her.
Another fitting way to describe this film would be to call it a Good vs. Evil fable, where a wise but non-complacent hero battles it out with a malevolent force. Coraline is daring, but she certainly isn’t fearless, which only makes her that much more relatable as a character. She even has to be helped at specific points, as seen when the local cat appears in the alternate world; we quickly learn that, once in this world, he has the ability to speak like a human, specifically in the voice of Keith David. (Is it the independent nature of cats that inspired Gaiman to make this character a bit haughty?)
As with any good fantasy, “Coraline” features a number of side characters, each with a unique personality quirk. Coraline’s downstairs neighbors are Miss Spink and Miss Forcible (voiced by Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French), former actresses who speak as if they were trying to be heard in the balcony section. I don’t know whether or not it’s unfortunate that we only see their Other selves giving a performance (to an audience primarily made up of Scottish terriers). Her upstairs neighbor is Mr. Bobinsky (voiced by Ian McShane), an eccentric circus performer who gets from point A to point B using only acrobatic poses. He claims to have a troupe of mice training for their next performance, although the only mice we see belong to the Other Mr. Bobinsky; the show they put on for Coraline is one of the film’s best scenes.
Finally, there’s Wybie Lovat (voiced by Robert Bailey, Jr.), a boy not much older than Coraline. He’s awkward and timid, always hunched over, always sneaking up on Coraline, forbidden from entering the apartment complex because of his grandmother. This character was not in Gaiman’s novel, and truth be told, I’m not sure he was needed for the film. He and Coraline have a few interesting scenes together, but there’s always the sense that the story would have been just fine without him. It certainly was when Gaiman wrote it. Be that as it may, “Coraline” is still a fantastic explosion of creativity, a haunting, vibrant fantasy teeming with visual goodies. It’s a dark film–not unpleasantly dark, but dark nevertheless. It works in much the same way as a bedtime story, many of which hint at the possibility of bad things happening. You know your children better than I do, but keep in mind that many are more fascinated by the macabre than by the mundane.
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