Creepy 3D stop-motion animation highlights fantasy turned nightmare
Most people probably think that Disney's renegade animator Tim Burton directed the dark 1993 classic "The Nightmare Before Christmas," even though Henry Selick received the director's credit. Burton only produced it.
Selick's following animated fantasy "James and the Giant Peach" was fun and inventive, and also produced by Burton. Selick's next feature, the bizarre and Burtonless "Monkeybone," was a bone-headed attempt to merge live-action and animation.
Given this track record, it's tempting to conclude that Burton did much more than simply produce "Nightmare" and "Peach," in the same way Steven Spielberg did much more than produce "Poltergeist," allegedly directed by Tobe Hooper.
"Coraline" squelches all that.
Based on the macabre children's book by Neil Gaiman (who used to read the story to his own daughters), "Coraline" proves Selick to be a champion storyteller with stop-motion animation. He resurrects the dark sinisterness of "Nightmare" and cannily merges it with a touch of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Arachnophobia."
"Coraline" also comes in 3-D, so the imagery - unavoidably dulled by the use of polarized lenses - still pops off the silver screen to maximum sensational effect without succumbing to cheesy attempts to make us duck in our seats.
The story begins with a pair of needlelike hands creating a little doll with buttons for its eyes. We will realize the significance of this opening later.
Spunky little Coraline (voiced with childlike abandon by Dakota Fanning) wishes for a life more than she has. She and her parents have just moved to an isolated, imposing old apartment building called the Pink Palace, home of two aging actresses, Ms. Spink (Jennifer Saunders) and Ms. Forcible (Dawn French), and the daring acrobat Bobinski (Ian McShane) with his circus of trained mice.
Mom and Dad (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) are too busy writing a book on gardening to pay any attention to Coraline. She befriends a young neighbor, a cycle-riding goth boy wannabe named Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr.), but she's still alone, except for her mangy-looking cat (David Keith).
One night, a secret door opens for her, and Coraline travels through a glowing, cotton-candy-like corridor into a parallel universe. In the alternate kitchen, Coraline sees her Other Mother (Hatcher), who looks like Mom, except she's super attentive and has buttons for eyes.
Her Other Dad (Hodgman) plays piano and pays attention to her. The colors are brighter. Her cat talks! The homemade food is delicious. This is what Coraline has always wanted, right?
Of course, there's a catch, and it comes out in the increasingly off-kilter way Other Mother begins to urge her to stay - forever. All she has to do is have buttons sewn into her own eyes so, as Other Mom notes, "You'll see things our way!"
Coraline realizes she must rely on her own wits and courage to get out of the living nightmare she has entered. Here is where the stop-motion animation works its magic, sucking us into a vortex of horrifically exaggerated proportions, inventive transitional shots and frightening, phantasmagorical spectacles, among them anime-inspired ghost children and a spidery monstrosity that easily rivals the best/worst of Disney villains.
Digital animation would look too sterile; hand-drawn 2D animation would look too flat. Selick's medium of choice - old-fashioned stop-motion like the kind used in 1933's "King Kong" - proves to be the ideal way to tell Coraline's scarifying lesson in getting what you wish for.
Now it's final: Selick really did direct "The Nightmare Before Christmas."
<p class="factboxheadblack">"Coraline"</p> <p class="News">Four stars</p> <p class="News"><b>Voices by: </b>Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Robert Bailey Jr., Ian McShane</p> <p class="News"><b>Directed by: </b>Henry Selick</p> <p class="News"><b>Other: </b>A Focus Films release. Rated PG. 100 minutes</p>