Post by BIGFANBOY on Feb 5, 2009 23:12:12 GMT -5
CORALINE
Review by Gary Dean Murray
Stop motion animation has grown by leaps and bounds even in this computer generated world of cinema. What basically started with Willis O'Brien and The Lost World took us to King Kong and Mighty Joe Young. Ray Harryhausen added a new chapter to this painstaking tedious form of art with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and the Sinbad series. But with the advent of computers, this way of making films was basically lost and forgotten. That was until Tim Burton produced The Nightmare Before Christmas. It became the little film that could, winning Oscar gold and spawning a major merchandising franchise. Well, the director of that perfect bit of animation (Henry Selick) is back with his newest creation - Coraline.
The story is of a girl named Coraline (Dakota Fanning). She has recently moved to the Pink Place Apartments, of which there are three. Above her abode is a circus acrobat who keeps a mouse circus in his room and below her is retired stage performers way past their prime. Her parents are a writers of seed catalogs who don't have much time for their daughter. Dad is bland and obsessed and Mom (Teri Hatcher) is just preoccupied. The only other person her age that she has any other interactions with is Wybie, a strange little boy who keeps more secrets than one would suppose. He finds a doll that looks exactly like Coraline, except it has buttons for eyes.
One day Coraline notices a door that has been wall papered over. Her exasperated mother finds a key and opens the little door, finding a brick wall. But that night, Coraline follows a mouse back to the little door and this time it is an open crawl space. Going through it (ala the looking glass) she discovers a world similar to her own. But this one has The Other Mother (also Teri Hatcher) who is everything that her real mother is not. There is only one problem. The other mother and everyone else in this world has buttons for eyes. Coraline awakes in her bed, thinking that everything she experienced was just a dream.
Or was it? A mysterious black cat can travel through both worlds and tries to warn Coraline that all is not perfect in this world that may or may not be of her imagination. The more that Coraline lives in this other world with the other mother, the more the line between the two worlds blur. While her real world is a bland existence the parallel place has a fun loving dad and a kitchen full of culinary delights, a little too Hansel and Gretal.
As a feat of animation, this is one of the most brilliant films ever put on the screen. Coraline is a feast for a lover of stop motion to the point where even people who know the process will wonder how they accomplished the feats on the screen. The documentary about this film will be studied by film geeks for ages just to unlock the secrets. Much like Nightmare and James and the Giant Peach, this movie will be a standard bearer for this type of film.
But the average movie patron is not Joe Film Geek and that is where the film is lacking. While it is a perfectly executed film, the story does come off a a bit weak. The actually plot doesn't build much on the base but just gives us chapter adventures. The film doesn't flow but beats along. A more complicated storyline and broader story could have helped in the final analysis.
The best way to sum up Coraline would be a Lewis Carrol tale told in a modern age. While not a perfect film it is easily the best film so far of 2009 and an early contender for the animated film Oscar in 2010.
To go back to BIGFANBOY.com click here - www.bigfanboy.com