Darkness is not enough

Rating: 2/10 (19 February 2009)

"Coraline" has an appealing dark sensibility, and avoids the formulaic nature of so many popular films. But there's no point in being dark if you can't also be interesting, and even unpredictable films must make some sense in order to be satisfying.
I haven't been this disappointed in a film in decades. It provided no dramatic momentum for ages; and even after the plot got going, none of the characters was likable enough to invest in. The three characters in peril are never really explained.The 3-D technology was wasted.
The film carefully sets up a parallel universe, but then fails to make sense of the parallels, in that the parents are equally weighted in one world but wildly out of balance in the other, with no real reasoning for the discrepancy.
Other reviewers praise this as a movie for "kids who think," but it's more likely to be tolerated by the kind of kids who will stare at anything that passes before them. The ones who pay attention will be alternately bored, confused and creeped out. Others also praise the movie for being so "visual," not noting how clumsy and redundant it is at delivering information visually and then again aurally -- the equivalent, for instance, of showing the handwritten note and then having a character read it out loud. A step backward for animated film.
I did enjoy the voice work of Teri Hatcher, whose acting I have never had cause to notice before, and Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French did their best to drag in some entertainment, though their characters' voices could hardly match the less-enjoyable grotesque images.
I have nothing against Neil Gaiman; I am a huge fan of "Stardust." But I can't understand why so many people on IMDb are using phrases like "the best movie known to mankind." A little bit of goth style is enough to dazzle some people, I guess.