Gorgeous animation, but the plot was a little choppy

Rating: 7/10 (21 December 2009)

despise the fact that I am a stop motion freak and am dieing to buy this movie on DVD, I can easily see why someone would dislike Coraline. The film is definitely worth watching and I would never say it's bad or OK. I would say it's a pretty good film, but the whole film just feels like it's a short story with one or two creative concepts with a bunch of uninteresting aspects added so the movie wouldn't be too short.
I watched this movie with really high expectations, which is probably why I was slightly disappointed at the end. I was mostly disappointed that the best scenes in the whole movie were spoiled in the trailer. If you watch the film and than watch the trailer you can tell they had to spoil the best parts of the film in order for the trailer to get you interested in the movie. For those that have not seen the movie and have not seen the trailer, I warn you not to watch the trailer, it will make the movie much more interesting and unpredictable if you don't.
The plot seems to have a pattern where basically two ideas in the movie are repeated constantly through half of the movie. I wish they added something to the plot that made you more interested in the constantly repeating ideas. I can see they tried to do that a little but it didn't do well enough.
There is something about the pace that bothers me also. The movie is too fast pace in some scenes.
Coraline is one of those films that has it's best moments in the middle of the movie. Unfortunately the exciting middle is TOO much more interesting than the beginning and end. So after the exciting middle was over I didn't really feel very interested in how the movie was ending, the last 20 minutes of the movie just seem like it was something they made up at the last minute so the movie wouldn't have an ending that comes too soon.
The music and animation really keep this movie on it's stand. I love the music at the main titles, it's creepy but relaxing at the same time. The end credits is like a fast moving energetic version of the main titles. Coraline isn't a musical, but it does have two short songs, which works perfectly for the movie. The animation is the best thing about the whole movie, which is probably why the movie doesn't have that good of a story. The story was okay but just by a few points I would sadly have to put Coraline in the category of "movies that focus too much more on animation than the story". However, it's well worth watching just to see the amazing images and flawless stop motion.
So all in all, worth seeing. Just keep low on the expectations and avoid seeing the trailer.