FamilyFans Movies

☼☼☼

CORALINE (PG)

Plot Summary: A girl moves to a creepy old home in Oregon with her parents and finds a hidden world through a secret door.

Reason for the Rating: Thematic elements, scary images, some language and suggestive humor.

Henry Selick is best known for his direction of The Nightmare Before Christmas, and now 15 years later, he has managed to create another wondrously creepy world in Coraline. Like Nightmare, Coraline is stop-motion animation, a fact which I didn’t even realize until after the movie was over, so seamless was the artistry of the movie. And artistry it is.

The movie begins when 11-year-old Coraline (Dakota Fanning) moves into a creaky, old, pepto-pink home in Oregon with her preoccupied and inattentive parents. They plead with her to explore the home so they can get some work done. In her exploring, she discovers a door into another world. In this other world, everything is better. Her mom is dripping sweetness and fresh-baked treats, and her father is kooky, but in a good way. Everything is about Coraline here. Her Other Mother (Teri Hatcher) has created wonders just for her. Like a garden full of playful snapping dragons, and a Russian circus master who dazzles Coraline with his jumping mouse circus.

The only not-so-good part of the world is that everyone has buttons for eyes. And Coraline must have buttons sewn over her own eyes if she wants to stay. Creepy, isn’t it?    

The creepiness doesn’t end there. The movie is populated with the bizarre, such as the two old lady neighbors who have a large collection of stuffed Scotty dogs dressed as angels—their deceased pets. Less innocuous than the stuffed dogs though, is the deceptive world of the Other Mother who sews little boys’ mouths into smiles and steals little children’s eyes and souls.

Like traditional fairy tales such as Grimm’s, Coraline is a fairy tale that is also equal part horror story. There is much fodder here for nightmare, and had I seen this when I was being terrified instead by The Black Crystal, I wouldn’t have slept for weeks. But despite (or because of) the horror factor, the strange world is captivatingly imaginative, like an American Alice in Wonderland.

As so often seems to happen, the tail end of the movie seems to unravel a bit in pace and plot, and doesn’t reach the dramatic crescendo it could. However, I was too busy enjoying the quirky creativity of the world to particularly care overmuch.

FAMILYFANS RECOMMENDS:

A wonderfully weird and inventive movie that, while perhaps not appropriate for younger viewers, is a refreshing jump into a new rabbit hole.

AFTER THE SHOW: 

Use these questions to spark discussion among family members who are interested in this movie:

• Have you ever wished your “boring” world were a bit more magical and exciting?

AV

☼☼☼

Note: All movie-related graphics in this column are standard publicity/promotional shots and are owned by their respective movie studios.