Coraline Movie Review

                                                            Coraline Review

     The movie Coraline, directed by Henry Selick, is the first 3D stop-motion film ever in history, and takes place in Ashland, Oregon. The main character Coraline Jones, voice of Dakota Fanning, is a young girl who is ignored quite often by her busy parents, and forced to entertain herself most the time. The other characters include: Mel Jones and Other Mother, voice of Teri Hatcher; Wybie, voice of Robert Bailey Jr.; the Cat, voice of Keith David; Charlie Jones and Other Father, voice of John Hodgman; Miss April Spink and Other Spink, voice of Jennifer Saunders; Miss Miriam Forcible and Other Forcible, voice of DawnFrench; and lastly Mr. Sergei Alexander Bobinsky and Other Bobinsky, voice of Ian McShane.

Coraline is crawling through the mysterious tunnel.

     It all begins with Coraline and her parents moving into their new home at “The Pink Palace”. Coraline heard stories, previous to her move, about a deep, dark well, so she goes out to look for it. She starts following a trail and begins hearing strange noises that she later discovers were coming from a boy named Wybie and his stray cat. Wybie is around the same age as Coraline and is a very rambunctious fellow that has a tendency to get on Coraline’s nerves. The boy then informs Coraline that she is standing upon the well. Wybie’s grandmother calls for him, so they both decide to head home. When Coraline gets home she tries to make conversation with both her parents, but they are too caught up in their own business to give Coraline the time of day. The only thing her Mother says is that a young boy, Wybie, left a doll at the front door for her. Strangely enough, this doll looked identicle to Coraline. Later on that night, Coraline wakes up and follows a little mouse to a tiny, hidden door. When Coraline opens it and crawls through the purple, blue tunnel she discovers her Other World. Her Other Mother and Father gave her whatever she wanted and everything was extremely bright and flamboyant. Coraline goes to bed, and awakens in her normal, boring room and is very upset. Coraline is already wishing it were the evening so she can rush to bed and visit her Other World again. That is exactly what she does! She finds her Other Father in the beautiful, colorful garden that is designed to look exactly like Coraline. She then watches a tremendous circus act with Wybie, who can no longer speak. This is what seems to be everything Coraline has ever wanted, but will she change her mind after her next and last visit? Her final visit isn’t what Coraline had in mind. The cat, that can talk in her Other World, tries to explain that this isn’t the place she thinks it is and that the Other Mother is evil. Ironically, when the three, the Other Mother and Father and Coraline, sit down for dinner the parents approach her with button eyes. Coraline is appalled and rushes to bed immediately hoping to awaken in her original bed. Coraline has a rude awakening, and is now stuck in her Other World. Eventually, Coraline finds a way out and is in search of her real parents. She finds them stuck behind a sheet of glass, frozen like icicles. Then all of a sudden the glass shatters, and Coraline instantly wants to make a deal with the Other Mother. If Coraline can find her real parents before the sun goes down, she has to let her go, if not Coraline agrees to sew her button eyes on and be hers’ forever. There is such little time to accomplish something so tremendous. Does Coraline get her real parents back, or does she become one of the “Others”?

This is where Coraline proposes a deal with the Other Mother.

     A piece of filmmaking I found interesting was the making of all the scenes. Everything was created from scratch and by hand. For example, every little flower for the garden had to be done separately. For the scene where the flowers grew one by one, multiple mirrors were placed around one flower and numerous shots were taken. They also moved the petals of the flower slightly to manipulate people’s minds to believe they were all a different flower, when in reality they were all the same. There is another scene as well, where they used fiber optic lights to make plants so that when they put a light under them, they would glow. Also, they slowly pushed the flowers up to make it seem as though they were growing. All the flowers were made out of paper, fiber optic lights, plastic or mesh. Lastly, in the scene where they needed fog, their first attempt was with cotton. Obviously that didn’t work, so they resulted in using dry ice that worked wonderfully.

     The second aspect of filmmaking I enjoyed learning about was all the characters. They first started with creating Coraline because “she was the most difficult to come up with”. They had to create multiple ideas for each character before they came up with the final products. Coraline was given blue hair to make her stand out. Her clothing was made out of cloth and hundreds of outfits were cut out to be identicle to the other. This was because every shot needed to resemble the other. Some outfits had to be purposely dirtied for the scenes where she rolled in mud. Also, the bodies were made out of wire so they could arrange them however they desired, and then placed clay over top to create the humanlike features. The features meant facial expressions, which had to be precise and made hundreds and hundreds of times.

The final decisions in making Coraline's wardrobe.

     So much time and patience was put into making such an amazing film. It is astonishing to see the drive people have to achieve such an amazing goal. The movie itself was played out very well and I loved it in the end. To be honest, I was not very excited at the beginning. It seemed creepy and not very pleasant to watch, but I am glad I did. It is amazing how someone can come up with such extraordinary ideas. Especially, when having to make a doll look real yet cartoonlike all at once. I would definitely recommend this movie to people with an open mind and willing to watch something they wouldn’t usual come across. I wouldn’t recommend this movie to young children, considering I was very skeptical at the start.