"CORALINE"

I was very pleasantly surprised with this movie. I am definitely a big fan of the "new wave" of animated films intended for adult audiences, ala "Shrek", "The Incredibles", "A Bug's Life", "Cars", "Wall-E," etc etc, and I think this movie absolutely fits in with this new genre.

The main theme from this movie was accepting and creating your own reality, and things aren't always what they seem. Coraline lives in an old boarding house called "The Pink Palace" which her family shares with other quirky tenants. It appears to be run down, and previously abandoned. The landscape is what I imagine a world post nuclear fallout to look like: Gray, desolate, barely any vegetation, and eerily quiet. She is bored and obviously miserable, and her parents are depicted as distant figures who are workaholics. Her mother is the "ruler" of the house, who calls all the shots and can't cook worth a damn. Her father is lifeless and depressed, and neither parent can divert their eyes from a computer screen. Coraline's only friend is a talkative and almost nosy neighbor, who is about her age. He gives her a doll, with buttons as eyes, and says he wanted to give it to her because it looked just like her. Weird? Well, it comes back.


The first half hour of this movie I couldn't get over the way the characters moved, or the "direction" of the movie. Even though it was a cartoon, the camera had the craziest angles. Time was obviously a different dimension, as when a character shook their head, or simply moved, it was slower or even faster then the way WE move. Time was probably the most important variable in the movie, as it was completely warped from scene to scene. This seems like an obvious take off of some Lewis Carroll moves, but was much darker and less random. The introspective soliloquy "What A Piece of Work Of Man" from Hamlet even makes an appearance in the film.

When Coraline discovers the outline of a small door on one of the walls, it "turns out" to be a wormhole into a house exactly like hers, with her same parents and room, but...they AREN'T her real parents, they are her "OTHER" parents, whom she even refers to as "OTHER PARENTS". These other parents have glowing skin, red lips, glossy eyes, and cook and clean and just want Coraline to be happy. They seem to have all the traits that her real parents don't have. There's only one weird thing...her other parents have buttons as eyes...just like the doll her friend gave her. When she goes to sleep, she wakes up in her REAL parents house. She begins to debate which life she prefers, and which set of parents will tend to her wants and needs.

Obviously, things go awry, and Coraline learns this fantasy world isn't quite what it appears. Coraline freaks out when her "other" parents tell her she can stay on one condition: if she sews buttons on her eyes. Creepy and weird. Even a 10 year old girl can figure out that's just messed up. When Coraline rejects this idea, her other mother refuses to let her go. From this point forward, she tries to escape the claws of her "other" mother by outrunning and outsmarting. At this point, the movie becomes pretty trippy...her other mother morphs into a creature that resembles a hybrid between Cruella DeVille and a daddy long legs.

The audience is never explicitly told what actually happens and what doesn't. It's pretty much up to the viewer to decide if Coraline dreamed this, or if she really did discover some mental wormhole only she can pass through. Who knows? But that really isn't the point...this movie will make you think about what reality you create for yourself, as trite as that may sound. Go see it. It's good, and you won't feel embarassed for seeing a cartoon.