Coraline

Though Henry Selick's three features have used the stories of other people, whether they be by Tim Burton, Roald Dahl, or now Neil Gaiman, he has an instantly identifiable look. His characters are grotesquely elongated or compacted (or both), and his landscapes are full of curlicues and both menacing and inviting at the same time. I had though Nightmare Before Christmas was all Tim Burton, but after seeing Coraline it's easy to see how much Selick influenced the final look of the film.

Coraline, based on a novella by Gaiman, touches on common themes in children's literature, from Lewis Carroll to L. Frank Baum, but with the overlay of Poe macabre. Coraline is a girl who has just moved to a new town. She lives with her parents in a large Queen Anne house, painted pink. Her parents write about gardening, but are too busy to either garden or pay much attention to her. She has some eccentric neighbors--a Russian circus performer, who lives upstairs, and a pair of dotty old English actresses, who live downstairs with their trio of Scottish terriers. Bored out of her mind, the girl, with the aid of some mice, finds a secret door that leads to a parallel world, where her parents are solicitous, the garden is wonderful, and the annoying neighborhood kid doesn't talk.

Of course appearances can be deceiving. Coraline's first clue is that her "other" mother and father have buttons sewn over their eyes. Eventually she discovers this seeming paradise is not quite it's all cracked up to be, and with some unlikely confederates she endeavors to escape this world.

I enjoyed this film a great deal, though the first third drags a bit. About halfway through it really picks up steam and turns into a grand adventure. The best thing about it is all the imagination on display, and the detail in the animation, which is stop-motion. The fur on the back of a feral cat is distinct, for example, and I marveled at a scene set in a theater in which the audience was entirely made up of Scottish terriers. I did not see the 3D version, as that technology doesn't interest me, and at times I could tell where the 3D stuff was supposed to be, but most of the time I didn't think about it.

This is of course a film primarily for children, but adults interested in both the techniques of animation and spooky stories will also enjoy it. Very young children might get the bejeesus scared out of them.