Coraline

Coraline (***1/2)

Henry Selick, the man who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas--the stop-motion animated movie which has deservedly become a cult classic--once again returns to animation to direct Coraline, a fascinating movie in a lot of different ways. Like Nightmare, its a much darker and stranger vision than most movies that are marketed as "kids" movies, and its also a lot more interesting. I didn't actually realize until after having seen the movie that its based on a children's book by Neil Gaiman of Sandman fame (aside: head down to your local comic book shop and check out "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?", the Gaiman-penned two-part Batman story, the first of which is currently out as Batman #686), but now that I'm privy to that information it makes perfect sense, as it has the same brilliant juxtaposition of the mundane and the fantastical that Gaiman first perfected in Sandman. Like 2007's Beowulf, the screenplay for which was coincidentally written by Gaiman, and a lot of other recent animated movies, Coraline is presented in 3D. Unlike Beowulf, however, the 3D effects didn't annoy the hell out of me and distract me from the movie itself rather than complement it. The fact that the movie is simply a lot better probably doesn't hurt either.

Our heroine for the story is its title character, Coraline. She's an adolescent girl who moves with her parents into an old rustic house that's been split into three apartments in a secluded part of Oregon. Her parents co-publish a gardening periodical, but don't seem to spend any time doing any actual gardening, instead spending all of their time fretting over writing about it. Their devotion to their self-employment irks Coraline, who hates being ignored by them, and can't understand why they dragged her out to the middle of nowhere, away from her friends at her old school when they seem to have barely noticed the change in scenery. Her mother (voiced by Teri Hatcher) seems to have a perpetual migraine made worse every time Coraline pesters her for something, while her father (Johnathan Hodgman) seems good natured enough, but spends all of his time in his office in a not-very-ergonomically correct slouch and sporting a five-o'clock shadow, emerging only to fulfill his promise of doing the cooking for the family, even though he's terrible at cooking.

As a way to vent about all this, Coraline spends a lot of time wondering about outside. On one such occasion she runs into Wybee, a boy who lives not far away with his grandma who is something of a science geek and who inexplicably has a big metal mask with a big crank that rotates between different lenses that looks like something out of Fallout 3. Coraline is mostly annoyed by Wybee's presence (hypocritical much?), but Wybee nevertheless sends Coraline a doll from his grandma's collection that bears an eerie resemblance to her. Things get eerier when Coraline awakens one night, and discovers that a tiny doorway in the living room that was previously bricked up is now a pathway to a strange alternate reality. She's greeted there by her "other mother," who looks exactly like her actual mother except she has doll buttons sewn on her face where her eyes should be. Unlike her actual mother, this version seems all to eager to please Coraline. She also discovers her similarily button-eyed "other father," who instead of sitting in front of a computer, sits in front of a piano with mechanical hands and composes songs about Coraline. The other tenants are different too. The eastern European guy upstairs, seemingly a not-quite-all-there drunk who talks to his rats in reality, gets his rats to put on an elaborate circus performance in this world. Meanwhile, the two old retired actresses living downstairs, normally obsessed with their scottish terriers, really old hard candy, and taking pot-shots at each other about their former careers, put on a stage performance of their own in the "other world" in a giant darkened theatre lit by terriers with flashlights strapped to their heads.

As you might expect, the button-people world is not what it seems and eventually the sinister true nature of it all is revealed. Coraline is given a very creepy ultimatum by her "other mother" that would allow her to stay in the other world with all its wonders and all Coraline has to do is perform one fairly disturbing self-mutliating act, the very idea of which will scare the hell out of a lot of the kids going to see this "kids" movie. Coraline of course knows better, refuses, and becomes locked in a battle of wits with the evil spirit that controls the "other world," making it alluring to children so that she can trap them there. The climax of the story becomes very video game-ish, and the movie's final showdown between hero and villain is exciting only to a mild degree, but the overall atmophere that drives the entire move is more than enough to maintain your interest.

The atmosphere truly is the heart of the movie and what it will be remembered for, much moreso than the plot which is somewhat fun but also a little bit paint-by-numbers. The score is provided by a French composer who, according to his Wiki article, is new to American movies, but I hope he does more because I immediately fell in love with his work here. From the onset his music provides an etherial and darkly beautiful complement to Coraline's visuals. Even though a plot-point of the movie is Coraline discovering the mysterious and wonderful, "other world," the supposedly mundane world of Coraline is still pretty fantastical. The old building which Coraline's family moves into sort of looks like the Bates motel from Psycho if Psycho was in color and it was painted pink. The Oregon in the movie sometimes looks more like a Lord of the Rings locale than an actual place in Oregon. I guess that's part of the movie's message--that you don't have to wonder into strange alternate realities to find "magic" in the world. Indeed, a key item that Coraline uses to defeat the movie's villain is something that she gets from the "mundane" version of the actresses, and a mysterious character who serves as a guide for Coraline towards the end of the movie can freely travel between both worlds. At any rate, I basically like the visuals beceause they're cool as hell, and serve as a reminder for what animation can do that live action still, for all its advances, can't. As the movie heads towards its conclusion, the other world takes on a macabre feel with set pieces like chairs that are made out of insects. Its everything that made Nightmare Before Christmas great, except probably even darker and more unsettling. If you haven't gotten the idea yet, while the movie is PG rated, its really not for younger or easily squeemish kids. Its definitely pretty intense.

Coraline has a plot is a morality tale that's pretty common amongst children's stories, and has a lot of the "down the rabbit hole" elements that stories have been using since "Alice in Wonderland." But the music, the visuals, and the dark, brooding, sinister character of it all give it tremendous life and make it stand head and shoulders above most animated movies, which are often content to have talking animals dance around and make pop-culture references. A very good, original movie.