Dazzling and Beautiful, Macabre and Hideous

Rating: 8/10 (4 March 2009)

Underneath all the conceptual quirkiness of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" was a story about characters finding and accepting their true identities (lesson learned: Halloween and Christmas just don't mix). Adapting Neil Gaiman's novel of the same name, director Henry Selick also turns "Coraline"the tale of a disenchanted young girl who retreats to a fantasy worldinto a character study whose appeal stretches past its obvious "12 and under" demographic. Above all, the film is a visual feast (even more so in 3D) of ceaselessly imaginative imagery that runs the gamut from dazzling and beautiful to macabre and hideous. Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is a blue-haired, sarcastic preteen who moves to an isolated rooming house with her cold, distant parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman); her only 'friend' is a gawky neighbor boy who furnishes her with a button-eyed doll that bears a striking resemblance to our heroine. In an act of boredom-curbing exploration, Coraline discovers a hidden door in the house that acts as a gateway to a flipside world, where seemingly perfect dopplegangers of the people in her "real" life possess button eyes, but are ominously attentive and caring. Parallels to the works of Lewis Carroll and Bill Watterson are apt (Coraline gets worldly advice from a talking feline), and what complements the stellar imagery is the metaphoric intelligence of the story: "Coraline" is a dark fantasy, but its anchor is the mature revelations of its main character and the familiarity and sanctity of the family unit (while admirably abandoning any tendencies toward cloying, melodramatic Family Values).