Friday, February 6, 2009

Coraline (***1/2)

CORALINE
Written for the Screen and Directed by Henry Selick

***1/2

I grew up within a generation that owes a great deal of its culture to the film The Nightmare Before Christmas. Without that film, there would be no emo, and goth would have never become as conventional as it is today. I was never a huge fan of the film, but it was such a staple of those I know, and it frequently lends those same people to blurt (no kidding): "Tim Burton is God!". There's only one problem, Tim Burton had relatively little to do with Nightmare, and the film was in fact directed by animator Henry Selick, who comes back to the big screen with Coraline, his best film to date.

The film is based on the Neil Gaiman book of the same title, and tells the story of a young girl named Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning). Coraline and her family have just moved into a new home, because her parents wish to find a more peaceful place where they can do their writing. Their both nature writers, an occupation which is much more time-consuming than I ever imagined before seeing this film. Neither her mother nor her father pay much attention to her, and with no siblings, Coraline is frequently left alone to her own imagination.

While searching through her new, strange home, Coraline finds a small door by the fireplace, about big enough to fit an infant. Curious, Coraline opens the door, enters and falls into a seemingly wonderful world, where she's equipped with a brand new set of parents that not only devote loads of attention to her, but cook loads of delicious meals. Then, Coraline wakes up, and she's in her old room. Its just a dream. Back to the mundane, normal world of alienation. So, she goes through the door again, and thinks possibly about staying in this wondrous new world.

Well, there's only one problem, everyone who lives in this world has sewn buttons for eyes, and her new mother informs Coraline that in order to stay, she would have to have the buttons sewed into her eyes. Coraline refuses, naturally, and then her once nice, homely new mother evolves quickly into a wicked woman who not only refuses to let Coraline go, but captures her real parents as well. While trying to free herself, Coraline must figure out a way to save her two parents too.

I don't know how much of the film was effected by its 3D format--I wasn't even aware that it was 3D until I reached the theatre. To be honest, I don't really feel that its third dimension adds any extra whimsy or magic, but instead is probably something put in place to make the children more interested. Surely, like Nightmare Before Christmas, there are some truly terrifying aspects within this film that could easily turn the little ones off. If 3D is what gets people to go out and see it, well then so be it.

The magic in Coraline, though, is its pure faith in the imagination. Surely, most children are greatly adept at creating fantasy worlds of their own. I remember when I was young, all I had were toy cars, but I was able to create a wonderland of characters and setting with just those cars. Its something that kids are just known to do, and Coraline is an exuberant love song to those impressionable years. Its a testament to the voicework of Fanning (that girl makes me feel so useless with all she's accomplished in such little time), that Coraline comes off as a rather charming young girl, when she's meant to be annoying to almost everyone within the story.

Selick resorts back to stop-motion animation, though I doubt he took the arduous route he went through with Nightmare or James and The Giant Peach. Why go through all of that when you have computers? To the film's credit, it does not make much of its animation. With films recently like WALL-E and Waltz with Bashir, animated films are no longer meant to be just whimsical films with children. They can have great depth with their character development, and discuss themes much more adult than its target audience.

I feel this review written doesn't directly sound like the kind of rave you'd read for a three-and-a-half star film. Surely, Coraline is not a perfect film, but it is surely my favorite film in this short-lived year, and even though it doesn't push its frightening throttle as hard as I would have hoped it would, it really grabs a hold of its audience, no matter their age. I feel that there are many children who may be turned off by the dark material (that's what happened to me when Nightmare originally came out), but there is no doubt that Coraline is a beautiful cinematic experience.

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