where's the story?

Rating: 6/10 (12 February 2009)

Sorry, folks, but "Coraline" is not "James and the Giant Peach" or "Nightmare Before Christmas." If the other two scored a 10, this one would be no more than a 6 on the same scale.
Technically it is stunning, including the 3-D. Where it fails is the story, with disappointing principle characters, empty iconic images, and a plot that holds few surprises. The mix of real world and fantasy just doesn't work very well here. The real world is in fact boring, and Coraline and her parents are not particularly likable. She sports an unbecoming Bush-Cheney smirk; her parents consider her a nuisance and mostly ignore her. That may be realistic, but it's not very interesting.
The film does manage a few flashes of brilliance when Mr. Bobinsky, Miss Spink, and Miss Forcible are on screen, which is all too seldom. They are reminiscent of the best in Nightmare and Peach. They are also not realistic, which is great.
The iconic images of the button eyes and the three balls that hold the spirits of the three dead children are never really tied into the story well and never seem to represent anything other than gimmicks. The best tales make much more of their "McGuffins." This story just presents them to the audience and then walks away. Do the button eyes mean something beyond the unpleasant notion of a replacement for real eyes? How do they get implanted, when and if they ever do? Would the character choose them or be forced to submit? It's never made clear, and whatever conflict might have accompanied that threat is lost. How do the little balls represent the dead children? How were the children's spirits captured in them? If we knew that, Coraline herself might have been under greater threat -- making a more engaging story. And where is the clever mechanism that a good story would present for freeing the captured spirits?
Nightmare had Tim Burton as one of the writers, and Peach had Roald Dahl's book. After director Selick's fans have finished praising "Coraline," the rest of us can't help remembering that it's the story that makes a good movie, not just the technique used to tell it.