Coraline [Dakota Fanning] and her overworked parents have moved into a new home. She notices this small door in the house’s living room that has been wallpapered over and bricked up. However, at night it will open up and lead her to a whole new world where all the adults are fun and understanding and don’t ignore her. It’s a paradise, or so she believes until things go wrong.

Henry Selick again dazzles us with his stop-motion animation. He previously gave us great films such as: The Nightmare Before Christmas [1993] and James and the Giant Peach [1996]. Here Selick also adds 3D filmmaking to the technology he’s using, unfortunately my theatre did not play the film in 3D and therein lies one of my biggest complaints about the movie. I felt like Selick intentionally meant this movie to be seen in 3D since I noticed a lot of movie spent its time keeping things in the foreground which would’ve added to the movie going experience.

Another notable credit for the film is that the original story is written by Neil Gaiman, also wrote books such as Stardust [1999] and Neverwhere [1996], who seems to be one of the more interesting children fantasy writers still currently writing. He even was a part of the film’s marketing with a great trailer about Koumpounophobia, which was the trailer that made me realize I had to see this movie.

Children films are always trying to pass along an underlying message that the writer usually embeds into the story and especially its resolution. Now whether the film is a success is not only if it entertains the youngsters, but also if they can understand the message on some level. I don’t expect children to walk out of the theatre and change from being all crazy to hugging their mothers and saying I Love You every five seconds after seeing the film, but you all know what I mean. While some films like WALL E have captured the hearts of most parents it decided to leave a lot of the children behind when it comes to expressing an underlying idea to the audience. I think that Coraline did well in making the underlying theme of the film accessible to the youngsters. This is a definite plus for the movie and a great message to have for children to understand, if they don’t already.

The story here is intriguing. It reminded me a lot of movies that I enjoyed when I was younger; things like The Neverending Story where they gave us a whole new world for us to explore which had its similarities with the real world but was a paradise to the young protagonist. Until of course all things go bad and we need a hero and this is where the movie Coraline begins to falter. I enjoyed the movie throughout seeing all these wonderful visuals, especially when it comes to Mr. Bobinsky’s [Ian McShane] mouse carnival and the theatrical showing of Miss Spink [Jennifer Saunders] and Miss Forcible [Dawn French] where they play mermaids and all with the theatre packed full of dogs. I loved seeing some of these scenes and I wished the movie could continue allowing me explore a world as imaginative as this one for another twenty hours. However, when the film got to the end I felt like they were rushing to keep the ninety minute running time.

As the story progressed and we got to the point where Coraline begins to see the faults of this fantasy world behind the small door the film continues to keep interesting while at the same time giving us more unforgettable visuals. Some that may even frighten some children but at the same time I don’t believe it is too frightening.

My problem with the movie occurs in the third act where the movie becomes a video game. The protagonist is given a task and it became way too easy and quick for her to solve the puzzles given to her. Selick tried to continue the trend of stunning visuals but he may just have run out ideas of how to make the same setting seem interesting to explore.

In the end if you’re taking a young one to theatre and this is playing then go right ahead and check it out, but if you plan on seeing something then I suggest you check out something else or get a rental this week.

IMDB says 8.2/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 88%

I say 7.0/10