Given how many novel-to-movie translations go horribly wrong, it's great to see one that goes horribly right. And 'horribly right' is the best way to describe Laika Entertainment's Coraline, based on Neil Gaiman's creepy bestseller.
Directed by stop-motion maestro Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas), Coraline contains an incredibly powerful lesson: yes, there are monsters, but they can be beaten.
Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher in Henry Selick's Coraline
Coraline Jones (Dakota Fanning) is a 12-year-old girl, stuck in a creaky old house and watching her loving-but-frazzled parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) wrestle with writing deadlines. Her bizarre neighbors (Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, and Ian McShane) don't listen to her, never really respond to what she's saying, and constantly mispronounce her name.
Coraline's bored, bored bored, and she wants a little excitement.
Cue a mysterious door leading into a house that looks just like hers. But everything's so much more interesting there: her Other Mother and Father (this time sporting buttons over their eyes) actually pay attention to her, and those bizarre neighbors put on dances and skits to make her happy.
However, a sarcastic black cat (Keith David) has a warning: "You probably think this world is a dream come true," he hisses, "but you're wrong."
The cat is right. The Other Mother wants to sew buttons on Coraline's eyes, and keep her in this fantasy world forever. And Coraline must use every ounce of wit and bravery she has if she wants to get home, and rescue her real parents as well.
It's a credit to both Laika Entertainment and director Selick that they didn't try to water down Gaiman's multiple award-winning novel. Instead they let the book's disturbing atmosphere – imagine Stephen King writing Alice in Wonderland – drive the film forward.
The stop-motion is more fluid than in previous Selick films, and the characters are so much more expressive in their movements. The way the Laika crew use colour and atmosphere to show how Coraline's dream world turns into a nightmare is breathtaking.
The voice acting is uniformly stellar. Dakota Fanning has become the poster child for a juvenile actor who brings believability to her roles, while Hatcher and Hodgman ably negotiate the dual portrayals of their characters. However, it's Keith David who stands out as a feline who off-handedly becomes Coraline's only ally in this strange and perilous world.
The Final Analysis
In a world where well-meaning people equate children's entertainment with pablum, it's wonderful to see a film that doesn't shrink from the sometimes terrifying world of childhood. Coraline Jones is an ordinary little girl stuck in a sinister situation, and the way she negotiates that peril without any magic powers or special destiny is strangely inspiring.
"The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination," writer G.K. Chesterton, one of Gaiman's biggest influences, observed in his essay "The Red Angel". "What the fairy tale provides . . . is a St. George to kill the dragon."
Coraline embodies this philosophy beautifully: it creates a sinister but fascinating world where the monsters are real, but can still be defeated. Parents may flinch from the bizarre and menacing creatures that populate this movie, but children will thrill to see their nightmares put in their proper place.
It gets an 9/10.
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