Having been a fan of Neil Gaiman’s for some time, I was very interested in seeing his novel Coraline on the big screen. But Gaiman is a bit of an odd bird. He has worked successfully in graphic novels, novels and film. His imagination is vivid and very creepy, and his humor is very British: dry and often ironic. By far my favorite work of his is Neverwhere, a fantasy novel about one man’s adventures in another world which exists in the London Underground. But his American Gods novel and Sandman comics are themselves quite interesting works. It continually amazes me how many things Gaiman can do with doors as symbols.
Like his other “children’s” work Stardust and Mirrormask, there is something strangely old-fashioned about Coraline. It is a story about a young girl who, after moving with her parents to an old home, finds a doorway into another world much like her own. Except her parents in this other world, her “other mother” and “other father,” cook her food she wants, let her play in the rain, and are otherwise permissive in ways her own “real” parents are not.
Oh, and her “other” parents have creepy black buttons for eyes.
Much as I expected, the movie is short on the kind of laugh-out-loud humor you expect in movies for children. This is both a refreshing change, and also a bit of a drag. Gaiman’s humor is certainly on display here, but it is often offset by the sheer creepiness of what is actually going on, making it very difficult to laugh at. The effect is disconcerting and entrancing, which I expect is precisely what the filmmakers wanted. And yet as the movie made its way into its final act, the sheer weight of creepiness seems to bog down the movie. Heavy from the beginning, the movie could have benefited from some humor as leavening. The result is a final act that seems long, inevitable, and a little too predictable.
The movie suffers from an extended climax, which has her solving a number of problems far too quickly after a few extended scenes which could have been shorter, including one very strange (and somewhat disturbing) circus performance. The pacing of the film is somewhat uneven, and the ending felt long and rushed at the same time, kind of the opposite of my problem with The Dark Knight, whose ending was overlong, thus robbing the movie of its momentum. I found myself getting rather impatient with the ending of Coraline even as I knew there were a few more things that needed to happen.
But that’s really a minor quibble, because the movie itself is a celebration of everything that is missing from Disney’s work. Gaiman is serious about his storytelling, and it shows. Coraline, the young protagonist (voiced with sincerity by Dakota Fanning), is the embodiment of adolescent turmoil. Chafing under the rules of her parents and wishing to strike out on her own, she discovers that the world outside is actually something worth being protected from.
It’s not something to take for granted that this movie affirms in a way so often lacking in movies (and not just of the animated variety) that the limits and rules parents impose on their children are, in fact, usually good and worthy and rooted in love, and that not everything that children want or desire is good for them. So often these movies are so intent on making the parents the source of the problem that they reinforce bad behavior on the part of children. (*cough* Finding Nemo *cough*). Okay, it’s easy to poke at Finding Nemo as the best example of this (and I really did enjoy that movie), but its message in the end was aimed at Nemo’s father’s overprotectiveness. But after all that happens to Nemo during the movie, it was hard to see how he was at all wrong.
Coraline strikes a much better balance. Coraline learns her lesson, but not at the expense of her parents and their authority. And that is what I mean by old-fashioned.
Visually, the movie is far and away the best looking kid’s movie in quite a while. It’s difficult not to point out how drop-dead gorgeous it is. The mixture of stop-motion and CGI was seamless. And seeing it only reminds me more of the very real limitations of computer generated imagery. Wood floors and fabric textures looked so real and tactile that the worlds of other computer animated movies look bare and clinical in comparison. Matched with some absolutely brilliant art direction, and the film is not only gorgeous but visually unique. I couldn’t stop looking at it.
I must make one final comment, though. I saw the movie in 3D. With the glasses. Now, I know that some filmmakers have been raving about 3D and what it adds to film, but I have to disagree. I will admit that the 3D techniques they are using now are far and away better than in the past. And Coraline used the 3D to great effect. But it is still cheesy. The glasses were uncomfortable, and from about five minutes in until the end of the movie, I had a headache. Sorry, but this technology still isn’t ready for common use. After my experience with Coraline, I’m willing to say that I will not see another movie in3D again until the technology changes.