Coraline (***)

Bits of other movies—Pan’s Labryrinth, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and especially The Wizard of Oz—came to mind as I watched this mostly charming adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novella. Director Henry Selick, best known for The Nightmare Before Christmas, uses that film’s stop-motion animation to craft another dark fantasy, this one with a girl (Dakota Fanning) at the center. Familiar fantasy elements abound, from the big old house she moves into with her parents to the house’s hidden tunnel to the alternate universe she finds on the other side. In this place, her mother’s (Teri Hatcher) benign neglect is replaced by the fawning of her “other mother”; her suddenly less-dull dad (John Hodgman) gardens instead of merely writing about it; her annoyingly chatty new friend doesn’t talk, but his cat does. And so on.

Selick’s visual flair gives the film a distinctive look. Although many of the backgrounds are similar to traditionally animated films, the people’s movements look slightly puppetish; their spindly limbs almost resemble those of spiders. A couple of modern touches, like the presence of cell phones, put the film in the present time, but there is no attempt to seem especially current or hip. Some of this seems a little like a blend of common fantasy themes, and young Coraline seems to save the day too easily, but imagination outweighs familiarity in a way that should please those who like this type of story.

IMDB link

viewed 3/4/09 at Riverview and reviewed 3/5/09