Technically good, missing some heart

Rating: 7/10 (14 May 2009)

Coraline 3D - I was expecting to like this a good deal more than I did. Which is not to say I didn't like it - that wouldn't be true - but my enthusiasm was noticeably more muted than anticipated, and I'm not sure why.
I like the source material - Neil Gaiman's story strikes me as Alice Through The Looking Glass only with spiders crawling all over it - and the movie adaptation remained suitably creepy. The look of the film is great, and the standard of animation is phenomenal. The voice cast is exemplary, so what went wrong for me? I think maybe it has something to do with the fact that I found the film self-consciously clever at times. The old ladies/trapeze sequence, and the flamboyant garden sequences (for instance) felt to me like the film-makers were showing off, and were almost irrelevances to the story. For that reason the movie never really engaged me - I should have been on the edge of my seat rooting for Coraline, but I almost didn't care what happened to her.
Even the 3D wasn't as effective as I had hoped - there were a few moments where I was impressed (oddly, these were moments like wide shots of a relatively flat and boring kitchen shot, but with incredible depth visible out of the windows) but much of the 3D had little impact.
This story would possibly have been better served by a live-action movie. For now, probably best to stick to P Craig Russell's comic adaption.