Coraline Film Review

8th May 2009

Cast
Dakota Fanning
Teri Hatcher
Keith David
Robert Bailey Jr.
John Hodgman
Jennifer Saunders
Dawn French
Ian McShane

Director
Henry Selick

Plot
Feisty 11 year old Coraline is left to entertain herself when her parents move away from her friends in Michigan to the rambling Pink Palace, also home to the most eccentric residents known to man. Ignored by her busy parents and stalked by her socially inept neighbour and his talkative black cat, the inquisitive Coraline soon stumbles into another – apparently improved – version of her own world. But the replacement of buttons for the eyes of her Other Mother and Father are only the first sinister clues that all is not well – and soon Coraline must face down fantastical, quirky and very real dangers to save her family and return to the real world.

Verdict
The result of every fantasist’s dream team of author Neil Gaiman and Henry ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ Selick, this lovingly crafted 3D stop-animation feature is a genuine delight for the eye and soul alike. Quirky, hilarious, exciting and frightening in turns, Selick has astonishingly improved upon his seminal ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ to deliver a feature that will entertain adults while thrilling – without terrifying – the little people.

Film Trailers from Filmtrailer.com

Full Review
On the long shot that you’ve managed to miss the connection, the unsettling Tim Burton-esque opening of ‘Coraline’ leaves no doubt that the film is a close stable mate of ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’. To be fair, this scene is probably the creepiest of the whole film, as a cloth doll is completely stripped off its frozen, cheerful features and lovingly re-stitched into a replica of our eponymous heroine. It perfectly sets up the fairy tale nature of this story – innocence twisted into darkness – warning us to be vigilant, aware that not all is as it may seem in this film. Yet having set this eerie mood, director Henry Selick promptly changes gear in the comic farce that only he can do so well, as Caroline arrives at her new home: the rather dubiously name Pink Palace. Pink, certainly, but the Palace proves rather ambitious.

Selick makes great use of his 3-D format with his manipulation of depth in these establishing scenes. Every frame is a sumptuous pleasure for the eye, full of enchanting and bizarrely eccentric detail. The same extends to the characters themselves: Coraline’s dirt-loathing mother is a detached writer working away on gardening articles on her shiny Mac laptop, while downstairs her father, looking rather like a monster from ‘The Dark Crystal’ bangs away on monolithic IBM XT. Selick, like original author Neil Gaiman, possesses a wonderful sense of the ironic.

Indeed, remain very observant through this film, for there is no excess fat to be found here. Even the most apparently random and innocuous elements – from mice to fairy floss to snap dragons and vintage mints – will be mined for their ironic potential as the Other Mother twists her fantastic world into a series of traps as inventive as they are dangerous for Coraline and her allies. The pay-offs for the attentive are endless and make ‘Coraline’ the prefect candidate for repeat viewage.

Unforgettable larger-than-life characters like downstairs neighbours barmy retired Burlesque entertainers Miss Spink and Miss Forcible (voiced by French and Saunders in roles they were born for); the inconceivably athletic but frankly barking upstairs neighbour Mr Bobinsky (Ian McShane) and his amazing jumping mice; and introduced character Wybie – a kind of underaged Hunchback of Notre Dame who seems intent on constantly apologising for his very existence, voiced by Robert Bailey Jr – who represents a departure from the book, will delight both adults and children.

The relationship between Coraline and Wybie, a lad of Coraline’s age who dogs her faithfully, allegedly at the behest of his cat, could have fallen badly into the stereotypical in less skilled hands, but under Selick’s watchful eye, they become an endearing double act. Dakota Fanning does a brilliant job of bringing Gaiman’s feisty protagonist to life, dealing with life’s accruing misfortunes without a shadow of teenage moan or mean spirit.

The soundtrack to ‘Coraline’ – by French composer Bruno Coulais, who you can be forgiven for having never heard of, having almost entirely scored only European films – utilises a magical blend of whimsical, lullaby-like themes, which are subtly underwritten with an impending sense of menace, which then neatly reverses when the film turns over to the dark side in the second half.

Henry Selick had wisely optioned Gaiman’s novel prior to publication, and although it took nine years and a gratis extension of said option from the author to get the feature into production, it proves well worth the wait and timely in its use of current technology. With debate raging about whether 3D is the future of cinema or a passing fad, ‘Coraline’ wades into the argument to prove it to be an artistic tool when used wisely – ie to compliment and not replace a stunning story. ‘Coraline’ certainly posses more than enough craft and soul to shine on both 2D and 3D screens, yet the latter really ought to be the medium of choice to get the most out of an extraordinary cinematic experience.