I went with my wife this afternoon for a matinee showing of the movie Coraline. We didn’t bring our 2 1/2 year old daughter with us. She stayed home with my parents.
Let me see what I can say about the movie. It was visually beautiful. Never once did I feel like I was watching “animation”. You can tell everything in the movie was hand made and animated with stop animation, rather than computer generated graphics. In the movie Coraline’s parents drive a VW Beetle. It was perfectly detailed in the movie. At one point there was a far away shot of the car and I could see the little VW emblem on the steering wheel (I know this car quite well as I’ve been driving my wife’s Beetle to work now that my car has the car seats in it).
The story was also well done and mostly faithful to the book. It was still just the right amount of creepy and not Hollywood-ified at all. The only quibble I have book -vs- movie wise is the ending. I won’t go into detail there, but I liked the one in the book better. The one in the movie is OK though.
I loved several characters in the movie. Coraline, in particular is well done. A brave, smart, sassy female character in the lead role just like the book. I also really liked the cat and The Great Bobinsky.
There were many kids at the movie today. You kinda have to judge your own kid on that. Obviously “the other mother” in particular was too scary for our 2 1/2 year old. My wife said her suggested age is 13 and up. I said 8 and up would probably be OK. My wife’s rule of thumb was “if you can carry the kid out of the theater, they probably shouldn’t have been there”. The movie is not violent or anything, just a little “dark”.
The more I think about it, the more I want to watch this movie again. I already told my wife I want to buy Coraline when it comes out on DVD. She agreed. This is big for us because we rarely buy DVDs anymore.
We even stayed to the very end of the credits and got the secret code to register to win the Coraline Nike Dunks. My wife is a saint for staying with me the whole time and spotting the code. At the very end it flashed for about 10 seconds, “For those in the know” and then has the code.
Bottom line is I recommend this movie. It is quite unique and enjoyable. Go see it this weekend.
The Struggling Writer 