Review of Coraline (2009) by Ben_M — 13 Feb 2017

“Coraline,” a dark fantasy movie, in my opinion, was a fantastic movie. The movie was produced by Lakia Pandemonium. The director is Henry Selick, and the characters are Coraline (Dakota Fanning), Other Mother (Teri Hatcher), Miss Spink (Jennifer Saunders), Miss. Forcible (Dawn French), and Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane).

The movie “Coraline” follows Coraline Jones, an 11-year-old girl as she moves to the Pink Palace along with her parents. Coraline spends a lot of time outside since her workaholic parents neglect her, and meets a geeky and weird boy named Wybie and his black cat who lives with his grandmother who is the landlady of the Pink Palace Apartments. Coraline also meets Mr. Bobinski, the Russian acrobat, and Miss Spink and Forcible the retired actresses. Wybie gives her a doll that strongly resembles Coraline that she keeps with her. One night, Coraline follows a mouse that leads her to the small door that she found that day while exploring and travels through the hole that leads her to another, parallel world. Her parents in that world love her and do nice things with her, unlike her real parents. These button-eyed characters are called Other Mother and Other Father. As Coraline goes to the other world, she is told not to go through the door, but she doesn’t understand why since that place has everything she ever wanted. But the more time she spends there, the more “creepy” things get and Coraline finally realizes that the other world may not appear as it seems.

Some of the pros are that it’s able to be more enjoyable at a higher age, something can pop out of nowhere very unexpectedly, and the animation is stop-motion which is not too often seen in a movie. It also has very unique and diverse characters, like a talking cat or 80-year-old show women. The only real criticism is that it can be very creepy for young children, and the plot can be stagnant at times. I thought that Coraline was a little scary at the part where her other mom and dad had buttons sewed to their eyes in the parallel world. The general feel of the movie, however, like how it’s animated was very pleasing to look at. This movie also has a really interesting and engaging soundtrack that can make you want to move to it, or even be a little creeped out, like when Coraline is laying in bed trying to go to sleep. Another thing that I noticed is that strange customs like stuffing dead dogs so that you would not have to part with them. While “Coraline” may have a PG rating, you may want to consider if you would want your child to see it or not. I would recommend that the age groups that should watch it are around 13 and up. The reason for this recommendation is that kids may be scared of some intense scenes like jump scares and creepy events. Kids might not also understand the storyline, for it is very intricately written. But overall, for most people, this will be a very interesting movie to watch for a delicate story yet filled with action.