If David Lynch Made Animated Films, They Would Be Like This

Rating: 8/10 (25 August 2009)

I adore Henry Selick's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and its ghoulish sense of humor, so I was prepared for more of the same in "Coraline." But what I didn't expect was that this film would be so delightfully disturbing and so utterly sophisticated. For anyone who wants an antidote to the typical Disney-fied children's fare available to you (and even the Pixar films aren't excluded from that description), "Coraline" is for you.
"Coraline" is like a David Lynch film for kids. Like Lynch films, it seems to exist in a universe of its own, where an entirely different set of logic applies. The imagery in the film can be quite frightening at times, but it's also quite beautiful in its own way. And the film's ultimate message -- that kids need to accept the imperfections of their parents and stop moping about an adult world they don't entirely understand -- is a very grown up one.
A marvelous animated film.
Grade: A