Coraline (2009)

[Movie 283 / Day 301]

Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) moves with her parents to an apartment in an old, pink, house. Being ignored by her parents, who are busy working, Coraline soon spends time exploring the house and surrounding land. Over time, she meets her neighbours; a boy her own age, Wybie Lovat, whose grandmother owns the house and grew up in it; Wybie’s cat, The Cat (Keith David); a pair of old spinsters that live in the downstairs apartment, Miss Miriam Forcible (Dawn French) and Miss April Spink (Jennifer Saunders), ex-actresses who still cling to their heyday; the Russian gymnast that lives upstairs, Mr Bobinsky (Ian McShane), who is trying to train mice as a circus act.

She comes across a strange little door set low in the wall in the lounge. She pesters her mother until she unlocks it to reveal a brick wall. She’s disappointed by it, but later that night, she is awoken by one of Mr Bobinsky’s mice, and chasing it downstairs, watches it squeeze behind the door. Thinking she has it trapped, she swings open the door, but instead of a brick wall, she sees the mouse running off down a strange, floating, coloured corridor. She goes down it on hands and knees, opens the door at the other end and comes out in an alternate version of the lounge she has just left.

Wandering around the house, she finds an alternate version of her mother, Other Mother (Teri Hatcher), who is identical except she cooks delicious food and has all the time in the world to lavish upon her daughter. Oh, and she has buttons for eyes.

After a few trips between the real world and the other world, and after seeing the Other Mr Bobinsky’s amazing trained mice and the Other Miss Forcible & Other Miss Spink’s stage show, she discovers that Wybie’s cat isn’t an other version, but that the cat can travel between the two places – and in the other world, it can talk. Not only can it talk, it gives Coraline advice. For it turns out that everything isn’t as wonderful as it appears on the surface, but rather that the other world is a place conjured up by Other Mother specifically to appeal to Coraline and entice her to stay forever. And to let Other Mother replace her eyes with buttons.

Eventually, Coraline learns that Other Mother has kidnapped three other children over the years (she meets their ghosts) and she hastens to escape Other Mother’s clutches. Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy, and Coraline discovers that Other Mother has trapped Coraline’s real parents in the other world. She goes back into the other world one more time, and with The Cat’s help, has to rely on her wits to outsmart Other Mother to free her parents and the ghost children.

CORALINE is stop-motion, and I wasn’t really sure whether I’d like it because I didn’t like director Henry Selick’s other movies I’d seen, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS and JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH. So, I was partly expecting to not love CORALINE much either, despite hearing some very good things about it. So it came as a bit of a shock when I found myself absolutely enthralled from beginning to end.

From the moment the movie opened until the credits rolled, I was spellbound. The attention to detail given to everything in the movie is staggering and it all moves with such a fluidity that it feels more like CGI than stop-motion. The design of pretty much everything in the movie is wonderful; from the house, to Wybie’s strange mask, to Mr Bobinsky’s strange gait and his amazing mice, to the spinster’s Scottie dogs (and later, the vampire Scottie dogs); the lighting is fabulous; the clothing is fabulous; even the trees are fabulous – and, on Bluray, everything pops all the more and you catch even more detail.

I can see the movie being a bit overwhelming for younger children as it is truly freaky in places – I wouldn’t show it to my five year old son, I’m sure he’d be scared of some of it – but it works on many levels for adults and older kids and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone looking for something a little bit different.

Just charming.

My Rating:
[ IMDB rating: 7.9 / 10 | IMDB link | Running time: 96 mins ]