This Movie Is Garbage

Rating: 1/10 (9 February 2009)

I suppose this is potentially a cute 'kiddie' movie. As a fan of the original story, I stupidly fell for the misleading advertising push ("From The Director Of TNMBC") and was duly rewarded. The book is wonderfully written and super creepy from the get-go offering such incredible imagery in less than 200 pages that the movie could have, should have, been breathtaking. Instead, the story has been painfully trimmed and reorganized, pointlessly supplemented (the "Whybie" character is completely useless, his stupid doll and all), and so sugar saturated that it made my blood hurt. The enchantment of the story has been destroyed, clever Coraline has transformed into an annoying brat, and the delightfully horrifying images the book painted have been thickly coated in cheerful colors, potty humor, and They Might Be Giants.
There is nothing disturbing about this movie (nothing that should be, anyway). The opening credit sequence is beautiful, and the dog-bats were pretty cool, though not worth the time and money I invested in being disappointed by this let down.