Classic Art Direction, Mature Use of 3D, Not Quite Perfect

Rating: 8/10 (7 February 2009)

Good day for Dakota Fanning fans, as she stars in 2 new flix opening this week; Coraline's the one to see 1st; Push (which I rated 7) is the one where you get to see HER.
Tim Burton's name appeared in front of 1993's The Nightmare before Christmas (7), but it was director Henry Selick who did most of the work. Selick's back with another round of the fiendishly painstaking technique known as stop-motion animation, this time of Neil Gaiman's novella, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for 2003.
1st off, the film is an absolute visual delight, wonderfully well realized. 2nd, it's an even richer story than the novella. 3rd, it uses 3D effects tastefully; there are no yo-yos, lances, or pickaxes poking out of the screen at you.
The Jones family is newly moved into the Pink Palace Apartments, and Mom and Dad, both gardening writers, are frantically trying to meet a deadline, so they have no time for Coraline. She pokes around on her own, meeting the eccentric nabors, and eventually stumbles onto a secret door that leads to an alternate universe where her Other Mother and Other Father are much nicer and more attentive. They encourage her to stay permanently, something that will happen if she lets them sew buttons into her eyesockets, just like theirs. At this point, Coraline is understandably totally creeped out and wants to get back to the normal world, but Other Mother is, shall we say, both persistent and resourceful.
The art direction here will certainly go down in the history of cinema as a classic. That the film itself falls a tad short of that pinnacle is due to a slight distancing of Coraline from the audience; she is somebody we watch, not somebody we identify with, and that makes a difference just significant enuf to keep this otherwise excellent effort from my top score of 9.