Coraline
Directed by:
Henry SelickScreenplay:
Henry SelickCinematography:
Pete KozachikComposer:
Bruno CoulaisCast:
Dakota Fanning, Dawn French, Teri Hatcher, Ian McShane, Jennifer Saunders, Keith David, John Hodgman, Emerson Tenney, Robert Bailey Jr., Christopher MurrieVOD (3)
Plots(1)
An unsettling parallel reality awaits a young girl when she crawls through a secret passage in this spooky animated children's fantasy based on the novella by Neil Gaiman. After moving into her new home with her work-fixated parents, Coraline Jones (voice of Dakota Fanning) teams up with new friend Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr.) to explore the neighbourhood. Deciding it's just as dull as she thought, she turns her attentions to her own house, where, after following a button-eyed mouse, she stumbles upon a hidden door. Crawling through the passage beyond, Coraline emerges into an eerie, parallel version of her own world. Initially bewitched by her strange new surroundings, where everything seems to revolve around her, Coraline soon has to fight tooth and nail to return home when her new mother (Teri Hatcher) tries to force her to stay. (Universal Pictures UK)
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Reviews (11)
Coraline. A fabulous movie for kids and parents alike. I had a great time watching and I liked it, therefore I giving it a full set of stars! And I really liked the voices: Teri Hatcher and Dakota Fanning. The enchanting trip into fantasy at the Pink Palace =oD. It reminds me slightly of "Alice in Wonderland", but I think that this is much better (plot, characters...)
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I made myself watch it and I feel like it's matured a little bit. I don't always let Gaiman get to me. There's still the contrast between genuine horror and pleasingly button-grotesqueness, but it's still great regardless. The stop-motion animation is also incredibly rich and imaginative. So why not?
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The film features an Alice theme, a script for a short at most, and Selick's eccentric fantasizing. After half an hour it simply doesn't do anything and comes ever closer to the desperate cry "Let something start happening, for God's sake!" Ironically, what I enjoyed the most was Dakota, who intones perfectly and literally "acts" in the vocal positions of a nasty brat, a scared little girl, and a brave girl. The rest of it was terrible and didn't even need the assistance of Tim Burton.
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If you compare Selick's Coraline and Burton's Alice in Wonderland, the winner is clear. The fantastic stop-motion animated Coraline wins. The film is visually almost unbeatable, it offers ten ideas for every minute, the few songs that are played are pleasantly crazy, the music is good, the characters are humorously bizarre... The problem is in the story, which is not uninteresting, but it gets boring at times, especially in the second half. But what the hell, I tell myself, it's a fairy tale. And a good one. Too bad it's not as adult as The Nightmare before Christmas...
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This is an animation that you just don't see very often anymore. I'm especially glad that Henry Selick chose this particular book by Neil Gaiman to adapt into a stop-motion animated puppet film. Coraline looks amazing in this animation and I'm glad that there are still people who appreciate and put effort into stop motion animation. The result is definitely worth it. Additionally, the horror-themed animation is even better. And this fairytale has a strong horror element.
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Gallery (99)
Photo © Universal Pictures
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