Sweet Coraline

Rating: 7/10 (17 June 2012)

In the wake of all the recent PIXAR family-friendly, uplifting animated entertainments, this was a refreshingly welcome alternative fairy-tale of an altogether darker hue. The eponymous heroine is a commonplace teenager, uprooted from friends of her own age, struggling to have her preoccupied parents pay her much notice. Worse, she has no pets, their new house is a cold, bare, uninteresting apartment in the middle of nowhere with only quirky neighbours, like the two middle-aged sisters and a Russian acrobat, all seeking an outlet or their "talents" in a carnival show or circus. Only a talkative young boy and his mysterious cat offer her any outlet for her wish for recognition and adventure, until, that is the boy brings her a doll which is her own image, only with buttons for eyes and she next stumbles across a secret door which provides her with a gateway to a brighter world where her "other" parents have more personality and more importantly time for her too. But things get stranger and darker with every midnight visit she makes to the "otherworld"...
Unlike other fairy stories, even the darker ones, this one takes frequent detours away from the narrative to introduce the supporting characters, usually in surreal situations. In this it chimes in with the unnatural but vivid world we enter in our dreams and nightmares. There are mixed-up elements present of classic stories gone by, most obviously "Alice In Wonderland", "The Wizard of Oz", the "Narnia" tales and others while the animation recalls the work of Terry Gilliam and artists like Salvador Dali and the darker imaginings of Van Gogh, but there's an originality at work too which is refreshing and entertaining.
The music too is original and sympathetic to the production and even if the story does end up at the required happy ending, it doesn't get there the most obvious way, taking in a Harry Potter type quest to get there.
The animation itself is excellent with many noteworthy sequences, transitions and backgrounds. Perhaps lacking a little of the wit and knowing humour of the best PIXAR films, this feature nevertheless shows that there is life in animation outside of Shrek, Toy Story et al.