CORALINE

Director: Henry Selick
Stars: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman, Keith David, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Ian McShane, Robert Bailey Jr.
Year: 2009
Rating: PG

Dark, creepy, funny, and truly entertaining, Coraline is a real treat for adults and older kids alike (for younger kids, parents may want to give it a viewing first; some of the subject matter and themes could be fairly creepy for younger children). Based on a novel by Neil Gaiman and directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas), the film is colorful and eerie, and has as its lead a young girl named Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) who is pretty much neglected by her busy parents ... until she gets a shot at a second pair.

The Jones family - Coraline, her mother Mel (Teri Hatcher), and father Charlie (John Hodgman) - have just moved into a new home ... a big pink mansion that's been divided into apartments. Both Mr. and Mrs. Jones are writers, currently working on big assignments that have left them so busy they haven't even made a dent in the unpacking yet - and seem to have even less time for their daughter. Coraline, in fending for her herself, gets to know her rather eccentric neighbors a bit - plus finds both ally and foe in the grandson of the woman who owns the building the Jones family lives in (though he and his granny don't live there themselves), named Wyborne (Robert Bailey Jr.); a boy Coraline's age, but truly annoying to her.

Then one afternoon Coraline stumbles across a small, hidden, child-sized door in the front room; one papered over with wallpaper and locked tight. Annoying her mom until she finds her the key to it, once opened the door's potential for adventure dies when Coraline finds the entrance bricked up.

Later that night, however, some peculiar mice lead Coraline to the closed door again - and this time, when she opens it, the girl is shocked to discover a dark, narrow tunnel leading to another door at the other end ... and when Coraline grows through it, shock turns to wonder when she discovers her home and parents again on the other side - now a perfect home, and perfect parents (with big black buttons for eyes) in which Coraline is the star. Her every wish is important and granted, complete with a new, "other mother" who can't do enough to make her daughter feel happy and loved. Coraline visits for awhile, eats dinner, and in general soaks up the attention before her "other parents" put her to bed ...

Before waking up the next morning in her real-life room.

No one she talks to about what happened will believe her, convinced she was dreaming, but a couple of other visits to this alternate world show Coraline that in this new land she has the same neighbors, friends, parents - only all of them dote on her, are exactly as she'd like them to be in her ideal world, and in particular she has a mother who simply does not want her to leave.

Ever.

But as always happens, when things seem too perfect there is just something horribly, horribly wrong behind it all - and Coraline finds out that her other mother wants to keep her in this new world forever, things go from weird to weirder. A sarcastic black cat who seems to be the same in both worlds (no button eyes) - and can speak in the alternative world - is Coraline's best shot at both finding out what's really going on, and escaping back to her real home and parents for good.

The stop-animation and overall look of the film is beautiful; it made me wish I'd gotten off my duff to see the film in a 3-D theater originally. The voice performances are all top-notch, and even Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French add plenty of creepy weirdness and humor to the film as Coraline's basement-dwelling neighbors, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible.

Imaginative and original, Coraline is a real treat that should appeal to anyone who has read Roald Dahl, or enjoyed Tim Burton films. It's an inventive and funny, really cautionary tale about watching what you wish for - as man, can things get jacked up when your wish comes true. **** - Reel Awesome