April 28, 2009: Coraline
Coraline is the animated tale of a girl, struggling to get some attention from her stay-at-home yet busy professional parents, who finds the excitement and love she’s looking for in an alternate world populated by life-size dolls with buttons for eyes. Or does she? And at what price?
I saw this movie in 3D digital projection, which is a technology very well suited to today’s computer-animated films. I’m not sure how this modern 3D technique comes across for live-action features, and I may go out to see the horror redux Final Destination later in the summer to find out. Purely for educational purposes, of course. Coraline’s spooky action scenes come across well in 3D, although I certainly wouldn’t say the third dimension is necessary.
To go too far into a plot description would ruin the wonder of the movie. I wasn’t familiar with the source material, as this was adapted from a Niel Gaiman novel, but I gather it’s a faithful rendering of the story, as my wife and son had read the book together and they accompanied me to see Coraline. The music complements the surprisingly dark and creepy tone. This has definite Oscar potential as the usual rogue Animated Feature nomination, although I don’t expect to see it win against Disney/Pixar’s Up. Coraline is an offbeat animated film in the vein of The Triplets of Belleville, whimsical but with dark undertones, and absolutely worth seeing.
Animated but not what you’d expect.
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