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Title: Coraline
Director: Henry Selick
Writer: Henry Selick (Screenplay) and Neil Gaiman (Book)
Year: 2009
Setting: A boarding house in the mountains somewhere in the United States (Washington, maybe), and a strange parallel world.
Plot: Coraline Jones, a young girl, has just moved to a new home with her parents. It is a rainy day, and Coraline is intensely bored, bothering her parents and searching for something interesting to do. She discovers a small door in one room that has been wallpapered over. She persuades her mother to unlock it for her, but it reveals nothing but a brick wall. That night, however, she is awakened by a mouse that she follows to the little door. She finds it ajar, and opens it further, finding before her a tunnel emanating an otherworldy light. On the other side of the tunnel is another boarding house, an Other Mother, and an Other Father. This Other world seems like a paradise to Coraline, with attentive parents to cater to her wants and whims, her favorite foods and drinks, and wonders of all sorts that dazzle and delight her. She soon discovers, however, that this Other world has a sinister side, and nothing is quite what is seems.
Review: I loved this movie! I will say that I am a sucker for stop motion animation, but even if I weren't I think I still would have been blown away! I have read that this is the longest stop motion films to date, at one hour and forty minutes. At twenty-four frames per second, that makes one hundred forty-four thousand individual frames that had to be shot. The animation is amazing. There are several sequences that are absolutely awe-inspiring, and I'm sure that I often had my mouth half open in a smile of delight or, well, awe as I watched. Unfortunately, it seems that the film is not being shown in 3-D anymore. However, while the 3-D definitely added something to the experience, I don't think the film would lose anything by being viewed in 2-D.
My only real complaint about the film is that, having read the book, I was slightly annoyed by the addition of Wyborn, a male friend character for Coraline. I can understand why they did it. Mainly it served to externalize some of her inner monologue into dialogue, and Wybie really only appears at the beginning and the end, and occasionally through the middle. The story is still Coraline's, and the movie actually follows the book in plot, feel and themes more closely than I had expected. Most things serve to expand upon the story, and take full advantage of the medium in which they are presented to us. Henry Selick, you might know, directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, another film that I love, and this is no disappointment. He has become one of my favorite directors.
Whether you are a Neil Gaiman fan, a lover of stop motion animation, or just like a good, well made film, I fully recommend Coraline.
Rating: 9/10
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