Review of Coraline (2009) by Macyb2021 — 03 Feb 2017

Sweet “Coraline”.

We watched “Coraline” recently and thought it deserved a review. “Coraline” was released in 2009 by Laika Entertainment and introduced a surprisingly dark tale told by stop motion. Parents bringing their children along to the movie theater to see “Coraline” had no idea what they were in for. What seemed like a adorable, sugar-sweet movie about a young girl turned out to be a nightmare inducing film. “Coraline” starts out with a family moving into a new home in the Pink Palace Apartments. Viewers will quickly realize that Coraline’s parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) are not very good listeners. While exploring in and around her new home, Coraline (Dakota Fanning) meets a supporting character named Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr.), who later gives her a doll that bears a striking resemblance to her. When she explores her living room, she discovers a portal hidden in the wallpaper that leads to a “better” alternate reality where everyone has buttons for eyes. This is where the plot gets dark. Coraline meets her “other mother” who gives her everything she could ever want. Coraline is convinced she wants to stay forever, but at a cost. Her other mother wants to replace Coraline’s eyes with buttons. After realizing this world is not what it seems, Coraline talks to some supporting characters, like the eccentric Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane), and two drama-obsessed ladies. The ladies, Miss Forcible (Dawn French) and Miss Spink (Jennifer Saunders), do perform a rather...interesting dance in the alternate reality that includes both of them nearly nude. Despite that suggestive scene, all these characters come in handy to fix the conflict in the movie. “Coraline” is not as sweet as it seems. That dark plot is meant for older children, but the compelling storyline requires you to pay attentiont to find out what happens. The animation would be perfect if it weren’t for the way the characters were portrayed. Some of them are a bit creepy and could traumatize young minds. We think that the movie wasn’t age appropriate and was given the wrong rating of PG. We believe that “Coraline” should’ve been rated PG-13. For example, children probably wouldn’t enjoy the fact that characters attempt to sew buttons into other characters eyes. However, there were a few lessons to be learned if your child wasn’t running out of the room crying. The animations were one of the movies positives and the characters fit the creepy vibe the movie portrays. This movie does have a creepy vibe to it, so we recommend it to young adults. This movie could scare younger children with its dark nature. We think this movie would better suit 10-14 year olds. Do not show your younger children “Coraline”, unless you want them to wake you up in the middle of the night. Our final rating comes down to the movie not being age appropriate despite the beautiful stop motion and interesting plot line.