Coraline

Henry Selick

In Henry Selick's Coraline, a young girl and her stressed out parents move to a strange new place. Coraline (Dakota Fanning) is a unique yet awkward eleven year-old who wants nothing more than to have her old friends back and caring, family-oriented parents. Things were dark, muggy, dull and nothing Coraline was, until te moment she followed two little mice into a tiny door. What she discovered was a vibrant, happy, Coraline-welcoming world. But as Coraline watches her Other Mother (Teri Hatcher), she begins to see things aren't right in this "perfect" world. Maybe everything was being controlled by the too-good-to-be-true Other Mother in order for her to collect the eyes of yet another child. "My father doesn't play the piano." "No need to. This piano plays me...” (Coraline speaking to Other Father, John Hodgman).

Neil Gaiman

Based off the best selling children's book by Neil Gaiman, the film gives you a creepy, crawling fear on the back of your spine. Coraline sees in the alternate world that there's everything she's ever wanted: delicious food, unique clothing, and magical toys. Unfortunately, it's all a trap, an illusion, conducted by the Other Mother so that she can take Coraline’s eyes and replace them with buttons.

"She spied on our lives through the little doll's eyes". (Quote from Ghost Child, enlightening as to how the Other Mother knows everything in Coraline's life).

In the beginning of the film, Coraline is exploring outside in which Selick makes as a darker, grey, eerie feeling to set the tone of Coraline's reality world. Selick and his design team do this by using dull grey colors, plus they creatively used dry ice to make fog in some scenes. Coraline then meets this weird kid named Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr.) and his stray cat (Keith David) who, as the story inclines, gets her out of tough spots. The next day after meeting, Wybie gives Coraline a doll that, oddly, looks just like her. The only difference was that this doll has buttons for eyes.

As the movie progresses, Wybie reveals that the doll was his Grandma's whose twin sister disappeared randomly one day when they were little girls, never to be seen again.

Coraline with Other Parents

Coraline, after going to the other world many times now, sits down to have an amazing dinner with her Other Parents. Her Other Mother brings up a proposition: if Coraline loved the better, new world, she could have it under one condition. Coraline had to trade her eyes in for buttons. Coraline now realizes that everything was being dictated by the Other Mother, and that things in the other world looked pretty on the outside, but not so much on the inside.

Cat with mouse

"I don't like rats at the best of times, but this one was sounding an alarm". (The stray cat referring to the cute little mouse he caught, who turned quickly into a fat, ugly rat once dead).

After a series of daring events Coraline must endure, she comes to a realization that she doesn't want anything other than the life she already had.

So is Selick's film disturbing and inappropriate to be a children's movie? Ask any parent and they will say yes, but ask any child and they'll say no. Coraline is brave, courageous, witty, and strong, never wilting in the eyes of danger. In a way it teaches kids not to be afraid and also to appreciate what they have. As the quote goes, "be careful what you wish for".

In my opinion, Coraline was slightly disturbing, but you have to look past that. From the details put into making the stop-motion film like the characters, character’s clothes, body language, facial expressions, and the music. Coraline is a mix of old, traditional animation and new, advanced technology. The inner message imbedded into the story is what won me over. Coraline, in my eyes, was wonderfully put together.